


Crossing of the Paths

by MMM_AJ



Series: The Travelers Trilogy [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Gen, Headcanon, Post-Apocalypse, Science Fiction, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2019-11-04 17:38:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17902544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMM_AJ/pseuds/MMM_AJ
Summary: Mewtwo can no longer stand living with humans, so he creates a dimensional portal and goes searching for a new realm to call home. What he stumbles into proves to be far more arduous and fateful than he ever expected.





	1. Prologue: Departure

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all, welcome to this revised second edition of Crossing of the Paths! For those of you new to the story, this is part one in a trilogy of Mewtwo fics that's been ongoing for more than 10 years. It's tagged with Headcanon because it only uses "Mewtwo Strikes Back" and "Mewtwo Returns" as canon, disregarding the Genesect movie and all other Mewtwo appearances. It also disregards mega evolution and Z-moves, so please don't expect any of these to make an appearance. For the Zelda Headcanon, I primarily use OOT and MM, disregarding most other Zeldas. Please keep these in mind as you read! For any returning readers, you will notice some dramatic restructurings and changes, especially the complete re-do of the entire Book naming conventions! I decided that what was called “Book 1” before was far too short to count, and made more sense to be labeled a prologue. So now this part is the prologue, Desert Wind is Book 1, and Darkness & Light is Book 2. Take note that I have cut out the summaries of the two Pokémon movies that starred Mewtwo for the sake of brevity, since it's fair to assume readers have knowledge of the first two Mewtwo movies. At any rate, there's been massive rewrites of big chunks of the fic and tons of plot holes patched up, so I hope you enjoy reading!

****

**Prologue - Departure**

  
**Part 1: Mew's Guidance**

 

  
(Art by Torcher999)

  
Saffron City was always dazzling at night. The headlights of cars in the streets formed glowing rivers of white and red light in the streets, and the youthful energy of the people enjoying the night life gave the city’s atmosphere an up-tempo pulse. Above them the cubic skyscrapers stretched up toward the somber, cloud filled sky. The bright lights from the city dimly illuminated the bottom of the clouds with a soft, diffuse glow. Individual lights in the skyscrapers blinked on and off as workers arrived and left for night shifts, adding to the fluidity of the scene. It seemed like everything was in a state of constant flux except for the concrete form of the skyline itself. Perched atop the highest of the towers was the lone, silent form of a shadowed wanderer. He sat precariously on the corner of the building, unmoving as he watched the city below him. A bitingly cold breeze washed over him but he did not shiver. He was absorbed in his nightly ponderings and practically nothing could distract him.

  
The name that his human creators had given him was ‘Mewtwo’, which to him was just another reminder of his unnatural origin. The tale of his creation was long and terrible and he preferred to avoid thinking about it; he was a science experiment created in a laboratory for the purpose of becoming a weapon of war for a devious criminal syndicate. For a good portion of his life he had been tormented by the circumstances of his birth, although recently it was less of a sensitive topic and more something he simply preferred to keep out of his mind. The best way he had found to keep it out of mind was spending his days wandering about the Kanto region to explore and see the sights. He never settled in one place for more than three days, was only active at night, and always slept in hidden or inaccessible places to ensure he would never be discovered. He was especially fond of spending whole nights wandering through and observing human cities when the moonlight was bright. Tonight was one of these nights and he had chosen Saffron City because of the beautiful night lights and the lush green city park.

  
After sitting on the same particular building for a lengthy span of time, Mewtwo grew bored and decided to visit this park. He psychically lifted himself into the air and gently hovered down several stories, eyeing his surroundings constantly to ensure he wasn’t seen. He landed on the grass next to a thin concrete path that weaved through the myriad trees. On impulse he decided to walk instead of just hovering through the forest tonight. His legs wobbled slightly, and one of the muscles in his left leg suddenly pulled tight and stung with a sharp pain.

  
"Ugh…. leg cramps again." He thought, faltering in his step. "I really need to exercise more instead of flying everywhere."

  
The trees in the park were dense here and the path between them was almost like a tunnel. It was especially dark underneath the foliage but the moonlight still filtered through the branches in sparse, tiny flecks. As he passed through he noticed a group of wild Pidgey in one of the trees, snoozing. They looked so peaceful and tranquil and for a few moments he envied them. They had a comfortable home in this world, a place where they felt that they belonged, a place where they felt safe. Shaking off those depressing thoughts he continued walking, favoring the cramping leg in hopes it would stop. He savored the beauty of the place for several long minutes, taking deep breaths and gazing around at the greenery as he walked. Suddenly Mewtwo's telepathic senses detected a human approaching ahead and he leaped behind a bush alongside the path.  He had been off his guard due to how long he had been lost in thought though and hadn't jumped soon enough. The person saw the bushes move as Mewtwo landed.

  
"Who's there?" The man shouted and walked up to the bush cautiously.

  
Mewtwo knew the consequences of being discovered so he quickly intruded on the man’s mind and psychically rewrote his short term memory. A perplexed look crossed the man’s face and he turned and returned to his jogging, having forgotten that the bush had ever moved. Mewtwo watched and waited until he was out of sight before re-emerging from the bushes. He quietly scolded himself for his carelessness and continued along a little bit longer.

  
Normally Mewtwo would keep his telepathic senses focused on his immediate surroundings at all times during his wanderings so that he could sense when people got close, but he had been distracted with appreciating the beauty of the park and keeping his balance on his sore, atrophied legs. He still felt his heart pounding from anxiety and decided that he had had enough of Saffron City for the night. He left the forest and took off into the air again, flying slowly until he left the city behind and then accelerating. He flew south toward the ocean west of Vermilion City. The air was bitterly cold and whipped at the cloak of dark brown cloth that he wore, but by now he was used to it.

  
Mewtwo landed on a small outcropping of rough stones that jutted out of the tranquil sea close to a shallow rocky shore. He settled down as best as anyone could if they were sitting on a rock the size of a dinner plate. Feeling far more at ease now that he had left the city, Mewtwo stared down at the glassy sea and the reflection of the full moon. It was a very calm night tonight, only a few tiny waves disturbed the surface and distorted the image of the moon. A lone Magikarp was swimming along barely under the surface, scavenging. Mewtwo idly watched its movements as it lazily flicked its fins and floated through the water. It slowed to a stop in order to rest in a shallow area sheltered from the waves by the rocks and its outline resolved as it settled in place. Mewtwo heard a whooshing above him and looked up to see a Pidgeot sailing through the air overhead. It looked down with its sharp eyes and spotted the Magikarp floating stationary in the calm pool. Immediately it pulled into a dive and dropped like a rock toward the water, aiming its talons for the kill. The plummeting bird pulled back up just in time to avoid striking the surface, raked the water with its claws, and lifted back up towards the sky with the Magikarp in its grip.

  
Mewtwo found himself pondering evolution and survival of the fittest after seeing that spectacle. Pokémon like Pidgeot were born with natural weapons such as sharp claws and a beak, but humans had practically none. How had they survived their early years as a species, when they were practically nothing but hairy pink blobs? Was it their ability to band together into large social groups? Intelligence? Were they just lucky? He shook his head and scowled, internally scolding himself for letting his train of thought go down this path. He'd seen what lay at the logical end of this style of thinking, he had witnessed it on New Island. He was wandering like this so he could banish these terrible thoughts, he couldn't allow them to continue intruding on his mind. 

  
Mewtwo looked back down at the water, which was still rippling from the brief burst of violent predation mere moments ago. As he gazed into the beautifully clear tidal pools, a short but vivid memory came surging up into his mind, nearly drowning out his senses. He remembered the time when he had been living on the island in Purity Lake, specifically the time when Giovanni had come to recapture him. When he had crippled his body with a massive burst of telekinetic force to escape Giovanni's machines, the young human trainer named Ash had carried him to the spring and thrown him into that pure, crystalline healing water. For a brief moment while he had been sinking toward the bottom of the pool, he had felt a profound sense of peace. Logically he assumed that this feeling had been caused by the healing power of the spring as it worked on his body and caused him to regenerate, but there had been something more to it that couldn't be explained away. Some sense of familiarity had struck him as he gazed at the beautiful fronds of underwater greenery lining the bottom of the spring. It had been so striking that it had almost seemed like he had been there before. Gazing at the clear tidal pools here tonight had brought that memory flooding back. 

  
Suddenly Mewtwo was overcome with the desire to return to Purity Canyon. It had only been a few months since he had freed his clone Pokémon companions and left that place, and he had expected the memories of it would be too bittersweet to bear returning so soon. But the compulsion was strong, he wanted to return to the spring and see just why it had felt so familiar. More importantly, it was finally a suitably compelling distraction from his wandering intrusive thoughts. Even if he didn't find the answers, maybe he could at least find peace along the way until the sun finally rose. He gathered his telekinetic energy and took off into the air once more, rocketing upwards until he had gained enough altitude that his glowing contrail of telekinetic energy wouldn't be visible to any humans watching from the ground. Then, he made for the heart of the wilderness in Johto, aiming for Mt. Quena. 

 

* * *

 

  
When Mewtwo arrived an hour later, he was floating midair a few hundred feet above where Purity Lake had once been. The huge brown crater in the dirt that he had created was still there, gaping at him from below. It was still too recent for the forest around the crater to start seeping in to reclaim it. 

  
"In a way, this place has left as much of a mark on me as I left on it. The difference is that the mark on me isn't visible." Mewtwo thought to himself. He then closed his eyes and focused his mind, visualizing the ancient cavern deep inside the mountain that had once been a magma chamber. In a brilliant flash of blue light he teleported down there, appearing in the chamber where he had moved the lake. 

  
The cavern was mostly dark now, it usually had small beams of sunlight that would stream in through cracks and holes in the rocky cavern ceiling above. But since it was night there was no sunlight to illuminate the chamber, and the pale moonlight was far too weak to find its way down this deep through the cracks in the mountain. The stifling, absolute darkness of the cavern prompted him to use his psychic powers to create an orb of glowing energy above his head, bathing the chamber in soft bright white light. All around him was a beautiful, lush forest that still managed to thrive despite the low amounts of daytime light, undoubtedly because of the hyper-nourishing properties of Purity Lake. He immediately lowered the intensity of the light when he saw numerous bug Pokémon sleeping in the trees, not wanting to wake and anger them. Of course he could teleport away if a swarm of angry Beedrills assaulted him, but that would defeat the point of him coming here. He carefully hovered through the trees until he found the shores of Purity Lake. 

  
The waters were just as beautiful and pure as the first day Mewtwo had seen them. He paused at the sandy shores of the lake and gazed out at the island in its center. He still vividly remembered coming here and trying to make it his home, though the bitter memories of Giovanni following him here began to freshly gnaw and sting at his mind. He made a quick snap judgment to at least return to the spring, even if he didn't necessarily plan to jump into it again. A shorter flight later and a quick walk through some old familiar rocky passages and he was there. 

  
Then, indecision pounced on Mewtwo as he gazed down into the waters. The spring was crystal clear, but his dim psychic light orb wasn't casting enough of a glow for him to see far. He gazed into it for several seconds, unwilling to potentially sully the water any further by swimming in it. While he stood there at the shore mulling indecisively over what to do, his eyes suddenly caught sight of a very faint glowing pink light further along in the water. It grew brighter and brighter until it burst up through the surface. It was Mew! The legendary feline playfully bobbed up and down, encapsulated in a bubble of glowing pink telekinetic force, giggling softly as she came toward Mewtwo. 

  
"Mewtwo! It's good to see you again!" Mew said cheerfully. 

  
To the ears of a human, those words would have sounded like some nonsensical chattering of Mew repeating her own name, but Mewtwo could understand Pokéspeak and human tongues both equally well. He cocked his head to the side and gave her a confused look. 

  
"You are... glad to see me? Why is that? I would have thought that you, who knows better than anyone what I nearly did to the world on New Island, would have reason not to ever want to see me again."

  
"But you didn't do it, silly! You learned and turned back in time before anyone was permanently hurt.  That matters far more in the long run. Besides, I saw what happened here in Purity Canyon, you know! I actually live here and sleep in this spring, so I saw you helping all those people and Pokémon when those bad humans came here. You're really too hard on yourself, you're not a bad person." Mew replied in a sweet tone. 

  
"I suppose, but wait...If you witnessed my ordeal with those humans from Team Rocket, why didn't you intervene to aid me? I was trapped inside a force field for a time, being tormented with painful electrical shocks." Mewtwo replied, clearly showing some displeasure in his tone. 

  
Mew shook her head sadly. "I know, I know, and I'm sorry. I have spent a very long time trying to trick the humans into thinking I'm gone, and Giovanni is the last man I need knowing I'm still around. I am aware that it's selfish, but I had to hide to keep my secret. Besides, they were right about one thing, psychic powers don't work well against machines. Your three human trainer friends were in a better position to help you than I was."

  
Mew paused for a moment, and for a brief period of time her good cheer seemed to diminish. "And, well, I'm not too proud to admit that maybe it was a mistake not to do more, I'm sorry. I'm not perfect, and it's easy to look back with hindsight and realize what you could have done differently." 

  
Mewtwo felt appeased by this response, he understood the painful nature of hindsight. He looked down at the waters of the spring again and replied. 

  
"I understand. I made my fair share of mistakes as well; I could have tried to intrude directly on Giovanni's mind in order to stop him when he first deployed his machines, before the attack started in full. I was blinded by my own anger, a problem that seems to keep recurring with me."

  
Mew gave him a sympathetic look and turned her head to the side, then floated over and sat on his left shoulder, allowing her telekinetic bubble to vanish. "Hey, it's alright though. You got through it ok, and so did everyone else. That's worth celebrating I think! Now thanks to you, my home is even safer from humans than before!" 

  
Mewtwo nodded and said "I suppose that is true. I just fear what may happen if someone else manages to create machines similar to the ones Giovanni used to entrap me. How would I escape then, especially if I am alone?" 

  
Mew patted his head with one tiny paw and said "Wellllll, I might know a trick that could help you! You know how to teleport with your psychic power, right?"

  
"Yes, it is a simple thing that even an Abra can do. I tried it while I was trapped though, the force fields blocked it."

  
Mew nodded and then took off from Mewtwo's shoulder, floating in front of him instead. "Well this trick is sorta similar to teleporting in a way, but it's not the same. It might still get you out of a bind, especially if a human catches you in a Pokéball. It's a way to open a rift in the fabric of space and time, originally meant for use by a couple of other special Pokémon who watch over the world and keep it safe. I keep it as my emergency escape card, but I think I can teach it to you too now."

  
Mewtwo perked up a bit at this. He looked up from the water of the spring and gave Mew a look of gratitude and interest. "This sounds utterly invaluable, I would be deeply grateful for a chance to learn it."

  
"Alright! It's a bit hard to describe with words, so would it be alright if I used telepathy to send the knowledge right to your mind? I promise I won't go poking around in there!" Mew chirped, sounding especially excited. 

  
Mewtwo paused briefly, hesitating for just a second, then nodded. "Very well, you may."

  
Mewtwo lowered all the mental defenses and barriers he kept around his mind, and then he felt a gentle and cautious telepathic probing from Mew. She was clearly taking great pains to avoid intruding far, which Mewtwo certainly appreciated given how easy it was to violate someone's privacy via telepathy. A stream of knowledge began to flow across the link, instructing him as thoroughly as a few years of repeated lessons would. Like any physical skill, psionics could be practiced until an innate reflexive mastery was attained, almost like muscle memory. Any such skill could also be rapidly taught via a direct telepathic link, going right from zero to fully trained in a matter of moments. It wasn't the first time he'd learned new abilities this way, he'd done it repeatedly during his time training with Team Rocket before realizing Giovanni was planning to use him as a slave. He'd learned from all the strongest and most rigorously trained psychic Pokémon that the Rockets could muster, learning in mere days what would have taken years of focus and training to get down with precision. Mew was thankfully different than all those he had learned from before, her mental presence was brimming with compassion and wisdom whereas the others had felt numb and empty. He realized now that perhaps that should have been his first warning sign that the Rockets had been planning to break his will like they had done to all the other Pokémon they possessed. At any rate, it took mere moments to transmit all the information, and then Mew gently broke off the telepathic link. 

  
"There. Feel like you've got the hang of it?" She asked. 

  
"I... I think so. Let me try it." Mewtwo replied, and was about to channel the energy to attempt it when Mew interrupted him. 

  
"No, don't! There's a reason why I don't use this except in emergencies. The portal you open leads to the in-between space. It's sorta like the place between realities. It's really crazy dangerous, there's a lot of loose energy bouncing around in there that can kill you if you touch it. Plus there's no air in there. So if you do go in, make sure you have a shield around yourself, and don't stay long. If you open the gate down here in the atmosphere it will suck a bunch of air in and pull everything around it inside. I sent you the knowledge of how to get back home if you do get lost in there too, but remember that if you wander into another universe that there's no guarantee any of them will be similar to ours!" Mew warned him.

  
Mewtwo nodded and replied, "I understand. Thank you. Your help does mean a lot to me."

  
"You deserve to live peacefully and safely just as much as the rest of us Mewtwo, even if you still feel like you don't belong. Now come on, let's do something fun! Wanna race me flying in a circuit around the lake? No teleports!" Mew said with a cheery laugh. 

  
Mewtwo paused, his internal gut reaction was that this would be undignified and silly. But perhaps, maybe he needed something silly and out of character for him, if only to keep him occupied for awhile longer. "Very well, I accept your challenge. It will be... enjoyable to compete with you in something different than battle."

  
"Great! Last one to get back to this spot on the shore is a rotten Exeggcute!" Mew replied, drawing a big X in the sand with her tail before taking off like a shot! 

  
**Part 2: Discovery**

  
It had been a week now since Mewtwo had visited Purity Canyon, and while the glow of Mew's warmth and kindness still lingered in the back of Mewtwo's mind, idleness was once again becoming his foe. He had taken to traveling around both Kanto and Johto, finding Team Rocket facilities and sabotaging them by wiping the memories of the humans and freeing their Pokémon. He knew this was helping to make a positive impact on the world, but the sheer size of the criminal syndicate was daunting and dismaying. Just how many humans could be tempted into such vile behavior anyway? He was flying away from a base that he'd just raided in the middle of Celadon City now, thoughts turning to a darker flavor once more. What did it even say about humanity that so many hundreds, or even thousands of these people would be willing to stoop to slavery and murder to make a quick, easy profit? He caught sight of the first pinkish glow of sunrise appearing on the horizon and heaved a heavy sigh. Dawn was coming, it was time for him to return to his meager little home and sleep. 

  
Mewtwo flew quickly back towards his lair, which was a small cave with its entrance hidden underwater in a lake. The cave still had air pressure that prevented it from flooding and Mewtwo was able to use his usual psychic air bubble to get in without drowning. He dove down into the lake, surfaced inside the cave, and then collapsed exhausted on a pile of hay that he had brought with him when he made it his home. It wasn't long before he slipped into a dreamless sleep.

  
Something was about to go very wrong however; a few hours after Mewtwo drifted off a pair of scuba divers came across the underwater cave’s entrance during a dive to observe and study the native water type Pokémon living in the lake. They shot each other a glance and then climbed up inside, poking their heads above the surface. The two men immediately saw Mewtwo sprawled across his bed, snoozing like a baby a dozen feet away from the pool where they had arrived. 

  
“Wow Larry! Look at that Pokémon! I wonder what kind it is?” One of the men said quietly, trying not to wake Mewtwo.

  
“I’m no trainer, but I can guess it’s not a water Pokémon. Look, no fins, no gills, and it looks like it walks on its hind legs." The other man replied.

  
Mewtwo stirred and the divers fearfully ducked back under. They were no trainers, they knew they had no real way to fight this one if it decided to attack them. They waited a couple of moments before poking their heads up for another look. Mewtwo had rolled over, but was still asleep.

  
“We had better not wake it up, it looks fearsome.” Larry whispered. 

  
“We should tell Professor Oak about this!”

  
“Right!” They both dove below the surface and swam back towards their boat.

  
A couple hours later, in the middle of the day, three more scuba divers appeared at the entrance of Mewtwo’s lair. They were Professor Oak and two of his assistants.

  
“Wow! Look at that Professor! This is one for the record books!” The shorter aide said.

  
Professor Oak shushed the aide to prevent him from waking Mewtwo and said “This is amazing, but let's try not to wake it in case it's aggressive. I’ll get out my scanner.”

  
Oak quietly opened a waterproof plastic bag and pulled out a small handheld scanning device that was meant to ascertain basic information about Pokémon. The device was one of his earlier prototypes of the Pokédex, all the finished copies of which had since been given out to promising young aspiring trainers. The device was made of older grey plastic which was smudged and stained with age, and it lacked the vocal synthesizer unit that finished Pokédex models had. It simply made a primitive electronic chirp and gave a readout of some basic information on its older liquid-crystal display screen.

  
“It indicates a Pokémon of the Psychic type… and good lord! Its power is off the scale! This Pokémon could make things very uncomfortable for us if it were to awaken.” The Professor whispered urgently, inching back underwater.

  
The two aides nodded fearfully and followed him down, more than happy to retreat before Mewtwo awoke. The three of them left the cave in a hurry; the professor had collected enough data and they felt the need to inform the league of Mewtwo’s presence. He slept peacefully for several more hours undisturbed and completely unaware of what had taken place.

  
Mewtwo eventually awoke on his own a few hours after nightfall. He rubbed his eyes, sat up, and frowned. He had a bad feeling about something, but couldn’t quite tell why. Living in this little cave meant that he couldn’t hear the Houndour howl at nightfall to wake him up, making it especially easy to sleep in. His stomach rumbled insistently to remind him of his need for food so he decided to put that sinking feeling out of his mind and leave the cave to go find some breakfast. He floated out of his cave using the air bubble again, trying to decide which town or city to go to in order to steal some food. Much to his sudden shock though, as soon as Mewtwo broke free of the surface of the lake he spotted a large group of campsites all along the lake’s shoreline. There were dozens upon dozens of tents, some with active campfires burning, and the place was swarming with humans! They immediately spotted him and one of them pointed at him before he could cloak himself.

  
"There it is!" Came the cry from the young teenage trainer who had trained his finger upon Mewtwo.

  
“Ugh, fantastic! How did this happen?” Mewtwo exclaimed in horrified shock.

  
For a brief moment Mewtwo was too paralyzed by shock to react, and a group of about 10 trainers scrabbled to pull out and toss a flurry of Pokéballs of various types up towards him. At the very least he instinctively managed to react by raising a psychic shield to deflect the entire lot. As the commotion woke up more humans that had been sleeping in their tents the mob rapidly began to grow, some still halfway stuck in sleeping bags as they scrambled for a chance to capture him. The trainers also began releasing their own Pokémon, though most were thankfully ground-bound and unable to reach him. He flew upwards a bit and began to focus, gathering his strength to attempt to put these humans and their partners to sleep so that he could erase their memories, just like he had done to the members of Team Rocket. Unfortunately, a fair number of the people in this group were actually competent trainers and not just moronic thugs; several of them unleashed flying type Pokémon that dove through the air and attacked with gusts of air and diving strikes! His shield again deflected their attacks, but the blows were strong enough to send him flying backward inside the shield, breaking his concentration. He tried flying up further and cloaking himself for his second attempt, but there were several Murkrow and Honchkrow Pokémon in the attacking group that could see through his psychic trickery thanks to their Dark Type advantage. Mewtwo barely had a chance to look into the minds of a few of the humans below before a Honchkrow's Night Slash attack shattered his psychic barrier and cut a nasty gash across his chest. Feeling as though he had no choice, Mewtwo performed an emergency teleport to escape the scene before he could actually fall far enough to be captured.

  
Mewtwo reappeared sitting on a tree branch partway up a tree in the forest not far from the lake. He needed a few moments to recuperate after taking a blow that solid. He took a few deep breaths and then put one hand on the bleeding wound on his chest so that he could use Recover on himself. The wound swiftly sealed up and vanished, not leaving so much as a scar, but his pride still stung from the perceived defeat. He had glanced just long enough into the minds of some of those trainers to know how they had found him too. It was already too late, he had been fully discovered and news was all over Kanto and Johto alike! There were far too many people now aware of his existence for him to ever mindwipe them all.

  
“Blasted dark types! Of course these humans would have them. What am I going to do now? They're going to pursue me to the ends of the Earth!” Mewtwo thought to himself.

  
Suddenly, the branch Mewtwo was sitting on snapped, causing him to tumble out of the tree and land on his stomach with a pronounced thud. He picked himself up and looked straight into the eyes of another trainer who was only standing a few inches away from him. She pulled out an Ultra ball and wound her arm back to hurl it at him, but he teleported away again before it had a chance to leave her hand.

  
Mewtwo found solace atop a boulder on the side of Mt. Moon, spending his time thinking of how to get away from the humans. He couldn’t cloak himself while he slept, which he knew was probably the main factor in his discovery. He would have to sleep in even more remote locations from now on and he might never be able to wander a human city again. He was engrossed in these thoughts for a painfully indeterminate amount of time before he was found by another human. Mewtwo sensed this one approaching far ahead of time thankfully, but since this human was alone he let him get close. Perhaps he could try to intimidate the trainer and it would discourage at least some portion of the throng of peers. He waited until he heard a Pokéball sailing through the air towards him before moving and ducked effortlessly to avoid it. He turned to see the owner of the ball; a young teenage human with spiky brown hair emerged from behind a large rock brandishing several more Pokéballs. He wore a purple shirt, blue jeans, and an odd golden medallion around his neck. Something about the trainer struck Mewtwo as oddly familiar, but for now he couldn't quite put his finger on it. The trainer shot Mewtwo a confident and competitive grin.

  
“Draw!” The trainer shouted, tossing an Ultra Ball at him.

  
Mewtwo created a small orb of psychic energy barely bigger in diameter than a nickel and flicked it to intercept the Ultra Ball. They collided in midair and the Ultra Ball shattered into tiny bits, leaving nothing but a few small shards of plastic and metal shrapnel that littered the ground in front of him and sprayed his feet.

  
“Tell me, trainer, isn’t it customary to use of one of your own Pokémon to try and weaken me before throwing one of those?” Mewtwo asked condescendingly.

  
“True, but word is that you’re a runner. You’d get away from me before I could launch a serious attack!” The trainer said, and then threw five more Ultra Balls at once.

  
Mewtwo deflected them with a psychic barrier and laughed. “Too bad for you that those rumors are indeed true, but I want to show you something else I can do. Something I want you to carry word of back to all your human friends.”

  
Mewtwo didn't want to actually harm the kid, but he needed to make an impression. So instead of attacking the young man, Mewtwo psychically implanted a terrifying vision in his mind of himself defeating the trainer, destroying all his gear, and taunting him terribly. For good measure he then teleported the trainer's backpack full of gear off of him and into a nearby river in order to make the vision believable. It was disheartening and he felt internally disgusted with himself, but it was perhaps the mildest first step he could take. Before the human could completely return from the vision to reality, Mewtwo once again teleported away, hoping he could find another suitably isolated hiding place. 

  
**Part 3: Departure**

  
It had been three days now since Mewtwo had been discovered by the general public, and unfortunately things weren't getting any better. His little illusion ploy with the purple-shirted trainer had done absolutely nothing to stem the tide of ambitious, hot-headed humans pursuing him. In fact, the only reason he had managed to sleep at all was through the liberal use of teleportation to reach even more remote locations. Unfortunately, none of the spots he had found so far were suitable for long term habitation.  He knew that he could never sleep in his lake cavern home again, so he had abandoned his meager belongings and set off in search of a new home somewhere else.

  
The idea of returning to Purity Canyon again was whispering in the back of his mind, but he decided that it wasn't worth the risk of potentially leading humans to Mew's home. He initially avoided all the major towns and cities, but soon noticed that the trainers seemed to be intentionally searching remote wildlands for him but neglecting any settled areas. It seemed like they were assuming he avoided civilization, a fact he began to use to his advantage. This evening he was searching in the outskirts of Cerulean City when he discovered a small cave mouth that opened up near the shore of a river just north of the city limits. The entrance was visibly unstable; Mewtwo spotted a massive cluster of heavy boulders and loose stones sitting precariously on the hillside above the cave entrance. A cursory scan with his telepathy allowed Mewtwo to sense the presence of multiple powerful wild Pokémon inside, adding to the value of the place as a safe hideaway. He could easily persuade the cave's other wild inhabitants to leave him be, and they would provide an effective deterrent should any humans figure out a way past what he was about to do. 

  
Mewtwo landed inside the cave mouth and walked in deeply enough to be reasonably clear, then reached out with telekinesis and began to violently shake the hillside, knocking free the substrate of loose rocks. A loud rumble sounded the beginnings of a landslide, which sent sprays of dust, then stones, and then massive boulders tumbling down the rocky hill. The sunlight that once poured in through the maw of the cavern was instantly quenched by the roaring torrent of silt and stone. Mewtwo felt a series of sharp vibration shocks in the floor as an especially huge boulder came to rest in front of the entrance, sealing it completely.

   
Mewtwo breathed a brief sigh of relief as he watched the dust settle, but it didn't take long before the sound of roaring Pokémon disrupted the silence. The sounds were deep enough in the cave that Mewtwo knew he had a minute or two before the territorial beasts arrived to investigate the ruckus. He only needed a few seconds though; it took very little time for him raise his psychic shield and create an orb of light for him to see by. He didn't intend to hide himself; now was the time for him to establish himself at the top of the pecking order. He began to walk confidently deeper into the cavern, seeking out his opponents. 

  
Before long Mewtwo came face to face with a Parasect, a Machoke, and a Magneton. He frowned a bit at the sight of the Magneton, steel types were always so damn problematic.

  
"This is our cave, outsider! Leave now before we force you to leave!" The Machoke barked angrily in Pokéspeak.

  
"I only wish to hide here from humans, I will not attack you or take much space if you leave me be." Mewtwo replied dispassionately.

  
Machoke snarled, clearly not impressed by the fact that Mewtwo showed no signs of being intimidated by his posturing. He charged at Mewtwo recklessly, shouting "Not good enough!"

  
Mewtwo rolled his eyes ever so slightly and then raised one glowing hand to point at him. Machoke stumbled to a stop, his eyes going blank and his jaw slackening. Parasect came charging in next, but met the exact same fate. Magneton was a bit more difficult since steel types resisted mind control, so it shuddered and managed to fire off a searing bolt of lightning from the magnets on its body. Mewtwo had already raised his shield though, so the bolt harmlessly bounced off and dissipated. Mewtwo then pulled the strings on his little Machoke puppet and directed him to turn and attack his metallic comrade. Machoke's fist slammed into the bottom left third of Magneton's body, damaging its eye and denting the metal considerably. It sailed backwards and slammed into the wall from the force of the punch, fainting already due to the force of the super-effective blow.

  
"Now then gentlemen, I'd like your assistance in convincing your comrades to stand down as well. Come with me please." Mewtwo said.

  
"Yes sir." Machoke and Parasect and replied in dull monotone voices, then turned to trudge along behind him.

  
At least a dozen more battles unfolded in the exact same way over the next hour or so. Every battle seemed to go the same too, with Mewtwo mind controlling every single Pokémon that his powers were capable of, then siccing his minions on the ones he couldn't. Before long he had either subdued or recruited the entire cave's population, and from there he simply ordered them to merely ignore him from now on while resuming guarding the cave, business as usual. From there, he spent even more time using his telekinesis to set up a maze inside the cavern using massive heavy stones and chunks of fence debris that had been lying around. At the very bottom of the cave he finally settled down to rest. He hadn't brought a replacement for his old hay pile so unfortunately he had to sleep on the bare rock, but he had expended so much energy fighting and building that he simply passed out after five minutes and slept away the entire day.

 

* * *

 

  
For four days it seemed like Mewtwo had finally found a safe place to live. The cave, which he had discovered was named Cerulean Cave, was close enough to a city to be an unlikely search target for the Trainers who were specifically looking for him, but far enough that average everyday human foot traffic didn't come close. The boulders blocking the entrance had been more than enough deterrence to keep out the occasional curious kids who would wander around the shores of the river fishing for Goldeen and poking around for anything interesting. By now Mewtwo had managed to steal a proper mattress to sleep on, a wind-up alarm clock that didn't need electricity, and even a small selection of human books to read during his spare time. It was beginning to feel like home, and today he was planning to go out and steal a large supply of non-perishable foods that he could store in case the search for him got intense enough to trap him inside long term. 

  
Mewtwo awoke to the loud, insistent metallic dinging of his alarm clock at 9PM, grumbling and rubbing his eyes. He sat up and saw several wild Pokémon staring at him from the distance in the cave, obviously perturbed by the alarm too. He shot them a glare, using a touch of energy to make his eyes glow menacingly, and they took the hint and sprinted away. He took a drink from the fresh river water that flowed through the cave, then stretched and prepared to leave. Without any special fanfare he raised a psychic cloak and simply teleported out of the cavern, not bothering to traverse the maze he had built.

  
Four hours later Mewtwo returned to the cave via teleport once more, lighting his chamber with his psychic light orb trick and carrying a huge pallet of assorted canned foods he had assembled. He had gone around Cerulean City, teleporting inside warehouses and stealing small portions of food cargo shipments bound for grocery stores. He didn't steal enough from any one place to raise any alarms, and had now gathered enough food for months. As he set down the pallet on the floor in his chamber though, his psychic senses immediately detected something amiss. The energy in the cavern was...different tonight. 

  
He could psychically sense emotions sometimes when they were strong enough, and right now the air was laced with a thick haze of aggression and anger. He immediately put two and two together and realized that a human had probably infiltrated his cavern, and a spike of red hot anger jolted through his mind.

  
"Is nowhere on this accursed planet safe?! I just finished making this place secure and comfortable! Do I need some sort of solid sphere of titanium to live in?!" He thought to himself silently, his mental voice a barely suppressed rant.

  
The logical side of Mewtwo's mind knew he should simply pick up his supplies and teleport away to try finding another home, but the frustration from being hunted endlessly and treated as a game trophy by humanity was finally coming to a boil. He'd allowed himself the foolishness of starting to grow attached to this cavern and in his enraged mindset, it was finally time to draw a line. He telekinetically shoved his food and bed into a corner of the chamber out of view, then turned to face the one single passage that the human was going to come down. 

  
It wasn't long until the flickering light of a flashlight came down the passage toward Mewtwo. The human stepped into the illumination cast by Mewtwo's psychic light orb and a flash of recognition lit up Mewtwo's mind. It was the same purple shirted human as before! The one who he had tried to intimidate with horrible psychic visions several days ago. He was wearing the same outfit as before, but he also had some sort of strange, bulky metallic hat on his head. Alongside him was an Umbreon, which one could easily assume was one of his partner Pokémon. The human grinned and locked eyes with Mewtwo, not intimidated in the slightest by the way his eyes were glowing with fury.

  
"You're a really elusive one, you know. Thankfully I know how to use one psychic Pokémon to track another, and my Alakazam is very talented at it."

  
"So in other words, I'm going to have to take more decisive measures to prevent you from finding me again!" Mewtwo growled angrily.

  
Mewtwo raised one hand, intending to take control over the human's mind directly this time. The metallic device on his head made a loud electrical beep though, generating a small localized field of Dark Type energy around the trainer's head that deflected Mewtwo's telepathy.

  
The trainer's snide grin only grew wider as he watched the psychic attack fail. "After our last encounter, I asked my gramps for help and he cooked up this handy machine that protects my brain from psychic attacks. You won't be messing with my mind so easily this time!" 

  
"Hmph, impressive technology. But it's not a perfect solution when I can merely knock it off of your head." Mewtwo replied with a deep scowl. 

  
Mewtwo raised one hand and prepared to simply pick up the trainer's body and turn him upside-down so that the device would fall off. Before he could complete the action however, the trainer barked out "Umbreon, use Dark Pulse!"

  
The diminutive Pokémon charged forward just as Mewtwo reached out to grasp the trainer's heels with telekinesis. Mewtwo spotted the approach and started to switch gears to prepare an Aura Sphere attack, but Umbreon was shockingly fast and had the drop on him. Umbreon leaped up into the air at Mewtwo and emitted a burst of murky blackness in a spherical pattern. The dark energy passed right through Mewtwo's psychic barrier as if it wasn't even there and seared the skin on his body, singing off the thin layer of fur. He reeled backwards and cringed from the pain coursing through him. 

  
Blinding rage began to bubble up once again inside of Mewtwo, filling his vision with a diffuse red. His conscious mind receded as the violent side came forward, just as his creators had designed.  This time though the Umbreon no longer had the drop on him; it had to take a few moments to land and gather itself after expending all that energy. That brief pause was just barely enough time for Mewtwo to let loose with Aura Sphere. A glowing blue orb of power soared from his hands and struck the Umbreon square in its flank, sending it tumbling to the ground unconscious.

  
Mewtwo didn't even have a chance to savor his victory though, his human adversary had taken advantage of his inattention and launched some sort of Pokéball at him. Mewtwo didn't even see it until it collided with his back and the glowing energy was encompassing him. He barely had time to shout in surprise before the device completely swallowed him.

  
The interior of the Pokéball was a barren plastic lined with metallic meshes designed to act as a Faraday cage, and it was dimly lit so that he could just barely see, but could also sleep if he chose. He could sense a powerful force field of some sort lining the interior of the ball so he did the first thing that his enraged mind could think of, he lashed out at it with as much energy as he could muster. Incredibly, the force field managed to intensify itself to match his attack! It seemed impossible, how was it drawing that much power? It seemed completely improbable to store that much energy in even the most advanced modern batteries! Mewtwo tried again and again, getting the same results each time, and he began to feel his stores of psychic power ebbing from so many high-powered bursts. Nothing was working! He was too enraged to stop though, he kept going and going and going until he lacked the power to try again, and he was reduced to a panting, exhausted mess. He slumped over on the floor and wheezed, mentally ranting and raving until he passed out from the exhaustion.

  
Mewtwo didn't know how long he had been out, but when he came back to consciousness he could tell it had been several hours just judging by how much of his energy had regenerated. It usually took at least 8 hours of full restful sleep to get him to full when he tapped out, and he sensed he was almost running on a half tank. Memories of his capture came flooding back and he was about to try smashing the ball open with telekinesis again when he remembered just how ineffective that had been. 

  
"You slave driving monster!" Mewtwo bellowed angrily, beating his fists against the floor.

  
A feeling of hopelessness and despair washed over Mewtwo, and in the absence of literally anything that could possibly distract him from his situation, he sat in silence and percolated in his own rage. The trainer would have to open the ball eventually, especially since he seemed to be the type who would want to show off his latest and greatest trophy to his competitors. Then, when the emotional cloud had somewhat cleared out of Mewtwo's mind, he remembered the portal trick that Mew had taught him and felt a surge of relief. He started to draw on his regenerated power and focused on creating the portal, but was interrupted when the ball suddenly opened and released him back into the world.

  
Mewtwo reappeared atop the peak of Indigo Plateau, the seat of power for the Pokémon League in Kanto. The sun was setting gorgeously over the mountains behind the plateau, bathing the entire area in a beautiful gradient of warm oranges and reds. The familiar face of the human who had captured Mewtwo was there to greet him; he was standing near the edge of the plateau and giving Mewtwo the most smug, insufferable grin imaginable. 

  
"The technology that goes into making one of these Master Balls is pretty impressive! It's probably the only thing that could hope to contain a Pokémon as powerful as you! I hope you're ready, because we're going to be taking on the Elite Four together."

  
Suddenly Mewtwo felt a flicker of recognition flash through his mind as he stared at his trainer. He had felt a vague sense of familiarity the last few times they'd encountered each other, but he'd been too distracted by his own escape attempts to pin down the human's identity. Now he remembered that the human's name was Gary and he had battled with Mewtwo once back when Mewtwo was still working under Giovanni's control and testing his powers against any top tier challengers that the Rockets could find. Gary had been one of those challengers, and Mewtwo had brushed him aside as easily as all the others. Apparently Gary had been tracking him down ever since. Perhaps he had been motivated for vengeance since Mewtwo had managed to kill the boy's Raticate during the course of their first battle. Giovanni had ordered it of course, it was obvious now that he had wanted to teach Mewtwo to be completely merciless even against fainted foes, but that incident had been one of the sources of the first seeds of doubt that eventually led Mewtwo to rebel against his control. Mewtwo stood there silently, staring at Gary as he recalled those times. 

  
"Well, come on! What's wrong? Where'd your vicious fury go? I know you're capable of being a death machine, so let's go turn that to a constructive end for once!" Gary snapped, a hint of contempt in his tone. 

  
That contempt was perhaps understandable now, considering what Mewtwo had done to the guy back then. But it almost immediately reawakened the dormant fury that had been briefly set aside during that flash of memory. Glowing psychic power flared to life around Mewtwo's body and he sneered angrily at him. 

  
"What makes you think that I'm going to obey you, human? Just because your little metal orb managed to temporarily imprison me does not mean that I am under any obligation to be your personal slave! I know very well that trainers earn obedience and respect from their Pokémon partners by besting them in a fair battle, but I am not beholden to your traditions! I don't care how many shiny metal badges you possess, you did not come close to earning anything resembling respect by hurling that miniature cheating device at me!" Mewtwo ranted.

  
Gary rounded on Mewtwo angrily, still completely trusting of his helmet to protect him from the danger staring him in the face. "Oh, well I guess it's mutual then, since you certainly didn't earn much respect from me by killing my friend!"

  
Mewtwo audibly growled now, his eyes beginning to glow as well. "I was being manipulated by that human monster Giovanni, you should know firsthand how vile and oppressive he and his sycophantic thugs were! But I suppose I shouldn't expect someone as consistently foolish as yourself to understand that I may have changed and grown to regret my past. Now I'm going to say this just once, human: release me or I shall remove that helmet and make you release me!"

  
Gary began to reach for the Master Ball again, intent on recalling Mewtwo back to his prison. Mewtwo noticed however, and with a reflexive burst of power he grabbed onto Gary's wrists with telekinesis and restrained him. 

  
"Fat chance, I know a liar when I see one! I can tell by your eyes. You can call yourself a reformed and penitent Pokémon all you want, but I remember that look in your eyes when you killed Raticate. It's the same look you have now. You're no more reformed than a murderer who's already plotting his next kill. I need to keep you under control for the sake of the world so you can't kill anyone else!" Gary retorted, just as fearless as ever. 

  
Mewtwo plucked Gary up by the collar of his shirt with telekinesis and brought him up close so he could look him right in the eye. 

  
"Don't you feed me this pathetic pretense of altruism! If you were some heroic warden keeping me locked away for the good of humankind then you would have let me rot away safely inside that accursed ball for the rest of my natural life. You can read the fury in my eyes all you want, but I am an actual psychic. I can read your thoughts and I can practically taste it: you hunger for power, fame, status, and glory! Your little guardian act is just how you justify my enslavement. Now this is your last chance, RELEASE ME!"

  
For a brief moment, Mewtwo could sense Gary starting to falter. Mewtwo had seen through him and hit the painful little vein of truth underneath. But then a look of new resolve came over Gary, and he suddenly sneered right back at Mewtwo again.

  
"Maybe you're right, Mewtwo. Maybe I do want to be a Pokémon Master, fine. Fair enough. I won't lie about that, but you should be able to sense that it doesn't make my other desires to keep my friends and family safe from you any less valid. So there, you have my act gone at least, you have my full honesty on top of having me trapped by my neck. But I still have you just as well trapped, if not moreso. You want to know why, kittyboy? If you want to maintain your own little charade of being a remorseful goody-two-shoes, then you're out of options. This helmet is glued to my head, so you're not going to be psychically controlling me, and if you try to teleport away my Alakazam will track you down again and again. You got no choice, either you give in and follow my commands, or you kill me and are forced to admit to yourself that you're still a murderer. Because I'm not going to release you, I'm going to recall you back into that Master Ball the moment you let go of me and we're going in there to challenge the league. So what's it going to be, buddy? You want to swallow that gigantic pride of yours and work with me, or are you going to give in and add to the blood on your hands?"

  
Mewtwo froze. The ramifications of the hand that Gary had just played sent icy chills of horror flooding through his veins. All the glow faded from his eyes at once, followed by his aura dying down to nothing. "No! No no no! This couldn't be!" His mind tried desperately to come up with an alternative for a few agonizing seconds. For a few more moments he gave serious consideration to giving in and just working with Gary for awhile. An idea struck him at that point; he could go along with Gary's plan and just use Mew's portal technique next time he had some downtime inside the Pokéball. Of course! Relief flooded back through Mewtwo's veins and he released Gary's hands, setting him back down on his feet again. He was just about to tell Gary that he would obey, but then Gary took things one step too far. He gave Mewtwo that huge smug grin again and started to taunt him. 

  
"Good. I guess you're not as dumb as I thought, despite just being a bloodthirsty war machine. If you want to make amends for Raticate then you'd better be ready to put every other trainer under my boot!" 

  
In that moment, Mewtwo saw in Gary that same lust for power that he had seen in Giovanni. His mind flashed back to all the times that Giovanni stood over him, gloating about his power and his plans to rule the world with an iron fist. These flashbacks took Mewtwo back to the torturously painful anti-psionic containment sphere that Giovanni had imprisoned him in. It caused him to remember all the hopelessness and agony that Giovanni had tried to break his spirit with. All of Mewtwo's rage came roaring right back to the surface, causing him to forget his plans to escape next time he was returned to the Master Ball. A bright red aura of psychic energy flared out around him as the anger swallowed him up once more, and in that terrible rage he yelled out the same words that he had once cried at the face of Giovanni. 

  
"This cannot be my destiny!" 

  
Then, all of the pretense of peace and self control vanished from Mewtwo's mind, replaced by the singular desire to escape his imprisonment. No longer in control of himself, Mewtwo charged a shadow ball in his hands and hurled it at Gary. The helmet unfortunately only protected Gary's head, so when the shadow ball struck him in the torso he doubled over and crumpled to his knees. Humans weren't really capable of taking hits like Pokémon were, so when the orb struck him with the full brunt of Mewtwo's psychic might it punched a hole clean through Gary's stomach, cauterizing the wound that it left behind. Unable to support himself due to the pain and shock, Gary rolled backwards and tumbled off of the cliff behind him and fell to his death.

  
Suddenly it was over. Like an intravenous injection of ice water right into the bloodstream, the horror of what Mewtwo had just done instantly quenched the flames of his fury. Mewtwo stood there in utter shock, initially unable to comprehend the gravity of his deed. Of course this wasn't even the first life he had ever taken, especially if one counted Dr. Fuji and all the scientists he had slaughtered on Cinnabar Island during his escape from the Rockets. But back then he didn't really know much about morality, he was practically a child and had been gripped in a single-minded terror and a need to escape. This time however Mewtwo actually understood the heinous nature of killing, he had moved past the callousness with which he had treated it before. When the full realization of the act set in, he clenched his gut, bent over, and vomited onto the grassy ground in front of him. 

  
This time it was too late. This time there were no other Pokémon around to save his victim with miraculous healing tears. The utter finality of it was like a great dark hand strangling the breath out of him. He struggled to stand once his body finished forcing him to dump his stomach contents, and he bitterly chuckled to himself. 

  
"You were right, Gary. I am a sham. My penitence was a charade in the end. At least you admitted to your own charade, you were honest. If only you hadn't built your entire bluff around me trying to live up to my own uselessly fragile ideals."

  
Mewtwo paused for a moment, giving just a few moments of silence. He then bent down and picked up the Master Ball, examining it and seeing that its little indicator lights were still active. He then walked over to the cliff that Gary had fallen down and stared down there, barely able to make him out. Bitterly, he reached out with telekinesis to tap the release buttons on all the Pokéballs attached to his belt to free them all. He then averted his gaze, unable to bear the prospect of watching Gary's Pokémon mourn his death. He tapped the release button on the Master Ball still bound to him, severing that bind. Then, to prevent it being used against any other Pokémon, he crushed it into a crumpled mass with his telekinesis. It had only been built to take pressure from the inside, not the outside, so it imploded into a sparking, crumpled ruin. Without any further words Mewtwo wound his arm back and hurled the ruined ball down the cliff too. He couldn't conjure any other words or deeds, so Mewtwo simply turned and took flight, soaring straight up away from Indigo Plateau. 

  
The guilt and shame clawing at Mewtwo's mind eroded away his clarity as he flew, and suddenly a simple and chillingly final idea came to Mewtwo. He remembered that Mew had warned him that her little escape trick could take him out of reality, into the space between universes, and if he wasn't careful he could end up getting lost out there. The thought was now occurring that maybe Mewtwo shouldn't find his way back. Maybe he could simply open that gateway and leave this world entirely. It would get him away from the endless procession of trainers that sought to enslave him, but more importantly it would safely isolate humans from his violent spurts of murderous rage. If there was any more suiting punishment for Mewtwo that didn't involve anything blatantly suicidal, he couldn't think of it. He would eventually, finally find a peaceful home away from humanity, and he'd never be able to endanger the lives of anyone else again. The snap decision was made and Mewtwo turned to fly straight up toward space, heeding Mew's warning not to open the gateway in the atmosphere. 

  
Mewtwo didn’t own any material goods worth taking with him, he didn't consider his canned food, alarm clock, books and hay pile worth the effort to carry, so there was no real reason for him to return to his hideout before leaving. He began to pick up speed and then raised an air bubble around himself as the air began to grow thin. It only took a few minutes at his maximum velocity to exit the atmosphere, and a sudden whim caused him to come to a stop. From his current position in orbit Mewtwo could see the terminator line between night and day creeping across the border between Kanto and Johto now, and the light of the sun was glinting brightly off of the Sea of Japan in the East. He could also see flickering patterns of city light on the darker side of the island almost like the stars at night.

  
Mewtwo sighed and turned away so that he could begin focusing his energy on the task at hand. He called forth a portion of his reserve power to accomplish this task; tuning it to the precise frequency that Mew had taught him. This was the first time that he had actually done this so he took plenty of extra time to make sure he did it right. His body glowed brilliantly as he concentrated and soon a little mote of glowing energy flickered on in front of him. Acting quickly to keep that pinpoint rift from closing he channeled a massive amount of his power into it, trying to shunt it open with raw psychic effort. His whole form seemed to tense as he poured such a huge amount of power into it, and after a few seconds it grew into a basketball sized glowing hole in the fabric of the Universe. At that moment something popped into Mewtwo’s mind, he had forgotten to say goodbye to that one trainer. That black-haired one named Ash that had helped him so many times. He couldn’t afford to turn back now that the portal was almost open, so instead he used his telepathy to send a few words of goodbye to him down on the surface. When the portal was finally wide enough for him to fit through, he took one more glimpse before flying through. At that exact moment he felt a small glimmer of regret that yanked on his mind, urging him to turn back. But the portal had already snapped shut behind him, there was no turning back now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (All art used in this fanfic has been created either by fans of the story or by artists commissioned for the story, and has been used explicitly with permission from all creators involved.)


	2. Book 1: Desert Wind - Chunk 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey again everyone! New readers will notice that this "chapter" in reality contains several actual chapters, and that's because I like to break up my work into many smaller chapters, but I upload it in larger chunks with 2-3 chapters per chunk so that my readers still get a substantial portion to chew on with each upload. This is a tradition I've kept since the rough draft, I feel it helps enhance the overall flow of the story. Returning readers from the old version will notice more changes abound as we move into Desert Wind, and one of the biggest changes is that I'm entirely removing the old italicized Flavor Paragraphs that used to be included in the start of every chapter. Now before you worry that all that content is lost, I can tell you that I plan to write it into the main body of the story itself via a few interesting storytelling segments! I've also made significant changes and upgrades to the setting to make it more Zelda-y and at least a little bit less of a Dune ripoff. I've been borrowing inspiration and design elements, as well as the Gerudo Language, from Breath of the Wild, but please remember that this fic is still based solely on Ocarina and Majora. Thanks again to everyone for sticking with me and reading my stuff through all these years!

**Book 1: Desert Wind**

**Chapter 1: The Divergence**

  
Mewtwo was greeted by a truly beautiful sight when he dove through the portal. The space between dimensions was filled with a chaotic soup of glowing multicolored energy which seemed to part in front of him as he flew. The stuff looked like some form of super-heated plasma, if plasma came in a full spectrum of bright rainbow colors. Thankfully Mewtwo's shield managed to block out most of the intense ambient heat of the place, but he could feel the air inside his shield bubble starting to gradually warm up. The point where the plasma seemed to part in front of him was roughly 50 feet ahead, and it was forming an almost perfect cylindrical tunnel shape for him to pass through with plenty of clearance. Mewtwo looked back briefly and saw that the plasma was closing up behind him too. When he looked closer at the walls of the "tunnel" around him, he could see that they were studded with small openings that showed views to starry black space inside other realities. Thanks to Mew's training, he knew that these were small latent gateways to other universes which he could pry open with his psychic power and fly through. Each one had slightly varying amounts of additional glowing plasma energy pouring out of them from around the edges. That freshly arrived plasma also came in a myriad of colors and rapidly commingled into the walls of the tunnel around it.

  
Almost immediately Mewtwo felt a powerful lurching force starting to draw him forward, even through his bubble. He began to pick up speed without expending any sort of psychic energy to do so, almost like this place applied some sort of natural acceleration onto his shield bubble. Thankfully the pocket of open tunnel accelerated with him, so he didn't immediately slam into the chaotic plasma. Still, the jolt of acceleration was enough to immediately wake Mewtwo up from the mesmerized state he had been in. He glanced around at the dozens of different latent gateways to different realities and tried to pick one out to try, but most of them were identical. One or two occasionally were pitch black, and he even passed one that was spewing a column of blindingly bright white light. These were easy to discount as potentially unsafe. But their presence planted a scary thought into Mewtwo's mind: what if he opened a portal inside a solid object? Or a different universe where the laws of physics didn't apply in the same way? What if he chose a realm where psionics didn't work and he lost his shield bubble while out in the vacuum of space? Even if something like that didn't happen, what if he simply ended up wandering the depths of space for hours or days until his reserves of psychic power ran dry and his shield failed? A cold, sinking feeling of dread pooled in Mewtwo's innards as he realized how reckless and rash he had been to just rush into this without preparation!

  
Mewtwo tried to turn and reverse course back to the gateway to his own world, but the tunnel needed time to turn, it couldn't just stop on a dime. He was still picking up speed too, which made it increasingly more difficult to navigate. He tried to decelerate by applying telekinetic force in the opposite direction, and it worked to a certain degree; but it wasn't stopping his acceleration, only slowing it. He could end up burning quite a lot of his reserves that way, so he just tried to turn back as quickly as possible instead.

  
That's when things went really wrong. He was homing in on the gateway back home when he passed closeby to what looked like a gigantic whirlpool in the wall of the tunnel. At the center of that swirling sinkhole was another gateway to a different realm; it was a gateway that seemed to be sucking in as much energy as it could possibly get a hold of. The plasma at the center of the maelstrom was glowing much brighter as it compressed to fit through the narrow aperture. Mewtwo tried to give it a wide berth but it began to suck him in regardless. It pulled with a force similar to gravity; the magnitude of the pull immediately took Mewtwo by surprise and caused him to start plummet toward the tiny gateway! He immediately poured telekinetic force on, trying to rip his way free of the suction with raw power, but something even more terrifying happened in response. Suddenly he felt the vortex begin to drain the psychic energy right out of him! His extra telekinetic push was completely sucked away and he continued to fall toward the vortex at the exact same pace. Panic started to bubble up in Mewtwo's mind, he only had moments to make a snap decision about what to do. He could either keep trying to break free, risking a chance that it could suck his reserves dry and cause him to suffocate here, or he could go with the flow and dive through the gate, taking the risk of surviving whatever was sucking the energy through on the other side. Neither option sounded good, but his imagination painted a vivid picture of there being a Black Hole on the other side of the gate, spurring him to try to break free again.

  
Unfortunately, Mewtwo's attempt to escape was cut short when a massive free-floating blob of plasma came careening out of the tunnel behind him and slammed violently into his shield bubble on the way toward the gate! The force of the impact was tremendous, bending and buckling his shield with thousands upon thousands of PSI of pressure. Normally Mewtwo could handle repelling such force with enough concentration, but since he had been focusing so hard on breaking free of the vortex, and because the impact had taken him by surprise, he shuddered and lost control, causing his shield to break.

  
For a brief moment, Mewtwo was openly exposed to the vacuum. The shield had reflected the plasma away from his body before it broke, so he wasn't immediately cooked alive by it, but in that quick flash of time while his shield was down, Mewtwo felt a sickening, bizarre jolt violently surge through his body.

  
>>KRRRZZZZZZZTTTT!!!<<

  
Mewtwo instinctively re-raised his shield almost immediately, managing to capture a majority of his air before it could escape. In that brief second though, he had a blurry hallucination blink into his vision. He could just barely make out the ghostly form of... himself? It seemed to be rocketing away from him at a colossal speed, heading back away from the vortex and down the tunnel. But before it could get too far down the tunnel it seemed to vanish into thin air. He forgot it immediately though, as his impending demise was yawning up below, closer and closer. The vortex had a complete grip on him now and he was about to pass into the funnel proper. His psychic reserves were draining rapidly now, so it was definitely impossible for him to break free with brute force. He knew that his only option was to go with the flow and try to widen the aperture so that he could get through without being bathed in super-heated plasma. 

  
Mewtwo used a bit more of his dwindling reserves in an attempt to open the portal wider, and for a few seconds it actually worked. But he wasn't widening it fast enough compared to to how quickly he was plummeting toward it and he ended up clipping the edge as he passed through. This time he didn't have the energy to maintain the shield thanks to the draining effect that the vortex had had on him, so his shield buckled and he blacked out right as he passed through. 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Floating in the blackness of space was a barren orange desert planet with a single pale moon. In orbit around this planet was a single, inconspicuous starship with a hull painted jet black. At the top of this ship was a glass-domed observation deck where a pair of shadowy figures were standing and looking down at the planet below. They could see a grid pattern composed of hundreds of tiny little shimmering motes of red light on the planet's surface, but these were only visible on the night side of the planet. The observation deck was totally dark in order for the occupants to get a better view of the planet below, though there was still a dim red glow provided by a few holographic control panels nearby. One of the two figures was cloaked in what looked like some sort of wings, while the other was wearing a set of polished metallic armor. They seemed to be in the midst of a heated argument, with the cloaked figure actively yelling and berating the armored one.

  
"And how many of the suspected artifacts did you find during all those years of searching, Admiral Shadetalon?" The cloaked figure growled in a deceptively calm tone that belied suppressed fury.

  
"One, sir." Replied the armored figure quietly.

  
"Then now you have your explanation as to why we are terminating our operations in this sector and moving on. It is no longer worth the significant expenditure of time and resources to search for items that very well may not exist, especially now that I know how much of that time you've wasted on idle, hedonistic recreation. Now how long do we have until the final charging sequence is complete? I came here for fireworks and I am tired of waiting." The winged figure growled.

  
"It's all complete milord, we're just wrapping up the final evacuation of staff. Give it about twenty more minutes and we'll be ready to fire."

  
The winged figure turned his glowing red eyes on the Admiral and gave him a lethal glare.

  
"I said I was tired of waiting. How many-"

  
Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by a loud thud however, as the unconscious and ice-encrusted figure of Mewtwo bumped against the glass enclosing the observation deck.

  
"What the actual-" The admiral mumbled in shock.

  
The other figure narrowed his eyes and then reached one hand out to point at the dying form of Mewtwo, and there was a flash of light as he teleported inside, landing unceremoniously on the metal floor of the deck.

  
"Heal him!" The cloaked figure barked angrily. "And give him an anesthetic so he doesn't wake up!"

  
The admiral knelt down and injected Mewtwo with a cocktail of medicines and anesthetic, and then laid his hands on Mewtwo's chest. Glowing red energy poured out, healing all the damage caused by vacuum exposure.

  
"Sir, this can't be who I think it is! This is impossible!" The admiral said, standing up and backing away from Mewtwo's unconscious form.

  
"I know that! Give me a moment..." The cloaked one replied, his voice trailing off as he knelt down next to Mewtwo.

  
He laid his hand on Mewtwo's forehead for a brief moment, then recoiled sharply in shock. "The tunnel!" He gasped, then turned to the admiral and snarled.

  
"This isn't good. The fact that either of us even touched him at all could have dire consequences. We could already have doomed ourselves just by saving him from the vacuum."

  
"So he is-"

  
"Yes." The cloaked one spat.

  
"Then that means..." The admiral paused for a moment to think, then continued. "We're trapped in a no win situation, milord. No matter what we do, even if we hadn't intervened at all, we'd be at risk of ceasing to exist!"

  
"Indeed."

  
"So what do we do?"

  
"The only thing we can do: intervene as minimally as possible. He can't ever know who I am, and we must set him back on the proper course and try to steer him from a distance."

  
"Can't we just send him back to Sarne?"

  
"I don't have the coordinates for that, it's been centuries and I didn't have any machines to record the location at the time. Besides, that would risk further complicating the tangles in our thread. We must work with as little direct action as possible, and that includes taking him through more gateways! Our hands are forced, our plans must unfold here in this realm."

  
"With all due respect milord, how the hell are we going to pull this off?"

  
The cloaked figure turned and looked back down at the orange sandy planet below, narrowing his eyes. "Cancel the firing sequence, but order all facilities to only vent to the visibility threshold and to hold the rest of their charge. Put some skeleton crews back on key facilities and set us on course toward...hmmmmmm...let's say... facility 2956. That's close to one of those villages full of thieving rats, they will prove useful for what I have in mind."

  
The Admiral walked over to one of the consoles and began to type, and soon the ship lurched and began to move.

  
"Oh, and don't initiate landing procedures. Our guest can't know we picked him up, so why don't we drop him from a non-lethal height so he thinks he landed on his own while unconscious."

  
The Admiral laughed softly and said "Ever the creative one, aren't you sir?"

  
**Chapter 2: Ven'rakesh**

  
The first thing that Mewtwo felt when he awoke was blinding, fiery agony in his right foot, knee, and hip. The pain rapidly jolted him to full alertness, though his eyes stung painfully from sand when he tried to open them. He immediately opened his mouth and bellowed at the top of his lungs from the pain. That wordless cry echoed a bit, but a lot of the sound was lost in the howling of an intensely strong wind. 

  
Mewtwo panted and forced his muscles to stop twitching and spasming long enough for him to rub his eyes and get the sand out of them. When he did get them open he saw almost nothing; it was currently nighttime and there seemed to be a vicious sandstorm howling above him, blocking out the starlight. He could vaguely make out the rough shape of some sort of crater around him; he was sitting in the bottom of it with his body partially buried in sand. He could also just barely see what looked like a jagged spur of bone jutting out of a bloody wound on his knee.

  
Mewtwo couldn't hold back another bellowing roar of pain that welled up in him. The sound echoed again before vanishing into the sandstorm. Mewtwo instinctively tried to use his powers to heal himself, but the psychic energy necessary for using Recover just didn't seem to be there. He tried again and again, but it seemed his reserves were totally dry. Suddenly he remembered the energy-draining effects of the sinkhole he had fallen into, and a feeling of despair and resignation washed over him. Well, this was it. He had really screwed himself up good now, and now he was going to die for it. Some part of him was incredulous about how he could have survived a fall from orbit without turning into a greasy red smear on the sand dunes, but it didn't matter anyway. He was doomed no matter if he fell miles or a few feet; his powers were gone and he was going to pass out from shock from his injuries soon enough.

  
A fresh surge of burning agony wracked Mewtwo's body and he involuntarily squirmed around in the sand, grabbing and squeezing handfuls of it while yelling himself hoarse. He was about to give up when suddenly, his ears faintly made out a distant shout that seemed to come in reply to his. In an instant the cold resignation of death parted and Mewtwo filled his lungs to yell again, trying to draw his potential savior to him. He knew that there was as good a chance as any that the source of the replying voice could be hostile, or even some sort of horrific alien creature, but his death would be certain if he stayed helpless out here in the storm. Better to at least take a gamble than to give up all his agency over the situation. He laid there waiting for a brief second or two, and the reply came again. His brief glimmer of hope began to grow, so he continued to yell back and forth with his would-be rescuer. Each time their voice got a bit closer. Amazingly, after several minutes of this back and forth routine, some light appeared out of the darkness at the edge of the crater.

  
Mewtwo looked up and saw the figure of a tall, cloaked humanoid woman staring down at him with intense golden eyes. She was carrying a large flare for light; it was pouring a column of intense white sparking flames directly upwards that illuminated her and the surrounding area in bright contrast. Dark, intense shadows danced against the blowing sand behind her. Mewtwo's eyes took in every single detail; the woman had knee-length ruby red hair tied into a large flowing ponytail behind her. The cloak she wore was made from ragged brown leather stitched together in haphazard patches. Underneath the cloak was a light, somewhat revealing outfit composed of red silk parachute pants and a red silk halter top that exposed her midriff. She had a red silk veil that covered her entire face, but the fabric of the veil was so thin and the light from the flare so intense that Mewtwo could see her face through it quite clearly. She had noticeably piercing and intense golden eyes, a somewhat sharp, pronounced nose, and wore a silver tiara with a large red ruby set in the center. He could also see a sheathed, curved scimitar attached to her belt and a small brass buckler tied to her back. Her skin was a dark tanned brown and she had multiple large battle scars dotting her arms and body. More unsettlingly, she didn't exactly look pleased when she spotted him, and her hand reached for the handle of her blade.

  
"Sulaaq!" she uttered in a disgusted tone.

  
Mewtwo suddenly tried to speak, but he had forgotten that his psychic reserves were completely dry and the telepathic message fizzled and failed. He realized then that he had never taken the time to learn how to actually speak English with his own physical mouth. Over-reliance on his psychic abilities may have just sealed his fate. There was a low metallic "Sssschwing!" sound as the woman drew her scimitar and prepared to jump down and attack.

  
"M... M-m-mew... Two..."

  
The weird, quiet sputtering in Pokéspeak from Mewtwo was miraculously enough to stay the hand of the warrior woman, who paused and gave him a perplexed look.

  
"Did you just... speak?" she asked, her tone incredulous.

  
"Yes, I'm trying to talk to you now!" Was what Mewtwo attempted to say, but the ridiculous Pokéspeak babbled out of his mouth instead.

  
Mewtwo cringed in humiliation when he heard the worthless nonsense come spilling out instead of what he wanted to say.  The veiled woman knitted her brow and gave him a deeply concerned and confused look, then climbed down into the crater to get closer to him. She didn't sheathe her weapon, but she didn't seem to be preparing to strike him anymore either.

  
"Mew? What do you mean? Is that all you can say?" she asked.

  
Mewtwo nodded his head frantically, then winced and bit his tongue to stifle a cry as another surging blast of pain smashed through his body. Now he was feeling woozy; it was clear he didn't have long before he succumbed to the shock. Frantically, he reached one hand out and drew words into the sand with a fingertip.

  
"Yes, that is all I can say. Please help me, I'm about to die!"

  
A look of shock came over the veiled woman's face as she read the message in the sand. "You can write?! That's impossible! Sulaaq can't write! I don't suppose you have a name do you?"

  
Mewtwo nodded and drew out his name in the sand. Her expression of shock intensified and she leaned down and looked him directly in the eye. Her gaze was uncomfortably intense and searching for another few brief moments, but Mewtwo couldn't maintain eye contact for long before he started to drift. Darkness was beginning to take him.

  
"Hold on, stay with me Mewtwo! Listen, take this and swallow it!" She said urgently, sheathing her scimitar and producing a small vial of red liquid. She uncorked it and tried to hand it to him but he was unable to muster the strength to reach up and grasp it. Determined to save him suddenly, she braced his head and tilted the liquid into his mouth for him. A strange, tingly warm sensation flowed down Mewtwo's throat, and he sputtered wetly between swallows. The flavor was a strange mixture of spiciness together with some unfamiliar sweet berry.

  
Mewtwo suddenly felt the darkness fade away almost as if a blast of cool refreshing water had washed it off of his mind. Full clarity returned to him and the pain from his leg dulled down to a very tolerable background level. He opened his eyes and looked up at his savior, first showing shock and then gratitude with his expression. The veiled woman corked the little empty vial and stowed it in a pouch on her belt, then spoke.

  
"Listen to me, Mewtwo. My name is Kalana Quindalo and I'm going to help you. The potion I gave you is too weak to heal all your wounds, but hopefully it will suppress your pain well enough that I can brace you and get you back to my village, Ven'rakesh. But Ven'rakesh is a fairly long distance by foot and the beasts of the desert love to hunt for food when the sandstorms hit, so if we're attacked I may need to drop you and fight them off. If it comes to that, I need you to play dead so they target me first as the greater threat. Do you understand?"

  
Mewtwo nodded eagerly.

  
"Good, now let's see if we can get you up on one foot at least."

  
Kalana rapidly began to dig Mewtwo out of the sand with both hands. Once he was freed she took his hands and began to pull him up. He cried out wordlessly from a horrible stabbing wave of pain when he was forced to move the shattered joints in his ruined leg, but once he was braced against her and had the bad foot dangling the pain faded back to a dull background throb.

  
Mewtwo had to lean against Kalana fairly heavily but she managed to take his weight and help him hobble along just fine. Getting up out of the crater was a struggle but Kalana was surprisingly strong and well-coordinated. Mewtwo winced and bit back more cries of pain as his leg moved; the stabbing jolts were still terrible but at least it was much more tolerable than before. As they climbed Mewtwo noticed that Kalana was actually the same height as him. Impressive for a human, given that Mewtwo was 6'7".

  
Once they surpassed the lip of the crater Mewtwo was buffeted by the wind and his eyes stung sharply as blowing sand assaulted them. He winced and stumbled a little due to the fact that he was now essentially totally blinded.

  
"Just keep your eyes closed! We'll take it slowly and carefully and I will call out warnings for any obstacles we might encounter." Kalana shouted over the howling winds.

  
Mewtwo gave the only reply he could: a quick nod. From then on he leaned against Kalana and hopped along on his good foot, slowly climbing and descending the shifting dunes. He immediately lost track of time as they made their way; the howling wind made talking impossible and he had nothing to focus his mind on aside from forcing his body to keep moving forward. On and on and on they trudged, with Mewtwo nearly losing his footing and falling on more than one occasion, until suddenly Kalana stopped them in her tracks.

  
"Drop!" She suddenly said, then let go of him and let him tumble to the ground like a discarded sack of potatoes.

  
Mewtwo fell onto the sand with a dull thud, going limp and giving his best impersonation of a lifeless corpse like Kalana had asked. He had to bite his tongue again as the impact rattled his ruined leg but he managed to avoid making any sound. He couldn't open his eyes to see what was happening thanks to the sandstorm, but his ears did pick up multiple footsteps, scuffling, and then Kalana yelling fiercely. There were clanging sounds of metal on metal, followed by a strangely inhuman snarling and croaking. Kalana screamed something strange in a language Mewtwo couldn't understand, then there was a squelching sound of a weapon striking flesh. Mewtwo's imagination lit up with images of some sort of nightmarish monster striking Kalana down, but the scuffling stopped and her voice called out over the wind.

  
"Disgusting Vura, you won't get the best of me!"

  
There was one more piercing inhuman screech before silence fell, and then Kalana ran over to Mewtwo and began to help him up. "Come on Mewtwo, one or two Lizalfos won't stop us but a large group of their friends might. We should move quickly now so they don't find us. This will be rough on your leg, but better to endure it than be turned into cutlets for the beasts."

  
Mewtwo really couldn't argue with that logic, despite the feeling of dread he immediately felt at the prospect of walking on his ruined leg. He climbed up to his feet and braced himself against Kalana, grinding his teeth the whole way, and they took off at as brisk of a pace as they could manage. It was agonizing; after several minutes the pain began to threaten to black him out again. He was starting to slow down and wobble when the sandstorm suddenly began to abate.

  
Once the wind had died down to a whisper Mewtwo used his free hand to rub the sand out of his eyes, then opened them and took in his surroundings. He and Kalana were traversing a sprawling orange desert that was currently bathed in a pale, ethereal white moonlight. With the end of the sandstorm he could see significantly far in all directions. There were periodic spires, outcroppings, and mesas of dry orange sandstone dotting the desert, as well as sparse ground vegetation in the form of low lying succulents, shrubs, and the rare cactus. Off in the distance ahead of them was some sort of broad structure that stuck out above the dunes; for now it was too far off for Mewtwo to make out clearly. Above them the sky was filled with a sprawling mural of stars that were undiminished by any sort of light pollution, aside from that provided by the brightly luminescent moon. Mewtwo noticed that Kalana was slowing them down a bit now thankfully, giving him some time to rest his leg a bit, so he spent the time examining the sky. It was curious to him; this world's moon looked identical to the moon which orbited the Earth, but he couldn't spot a single familiar constellation in the night sky. Not even the North Star appeared to provide its guidance, though there were six other larger unfamiliar stars twinkling in the sky which could compare to it in luminosity. Mewtwo let his stargazing fill the tedium of their journey until Kalana's voice interrupted him.

  
"We're almost to Ven'rakesh now Mewtwo, but I have to warn you about something. I know you're not Sulaaq, you would have tried to eviscerate me the moment I lowered my guard if you were. But the other villagers are going to be terrified of your demonic appearance, so I need you to act as non-threatening as possible. Move slowly and act calm at all times or one of the guards might decide to fill you with arrows, or worse. Understood?"

  
Mewtwo nodded weakly but remained silent, not wanting to humiliate himself any further with Pokéspeak. He looked up and saw that they had closed the distance sufficiently that he could make out the settlement with several details now. The town of Ven'rakesh appeared to have been carved directly out of a huge sandstone mesa with its top shaved off. There were no windows in the sides, but a large archway acted as an entrance with huge, slap-dash doors made of sloppily welded scrap metal sealing it shut. There were narrow vertical slots in the walls alongside the door, some of which had some sort of gun barrels pointing out of them. There was a symbol engraved in the top of the arch above the door and embossed with a layer of gold; the symbol looked roughly like a pair of dots inside the grip of a double-ended wrench, with curvy pair of caps around the wrench on top and bottom.

 

 

There were rickety looking guard towers made of wood and rusty metal standing just inside the wall, watching over the shut doors, and Mewtwo could vaguely make out humanoid figures standing watch in each one. Torchlight glowed out of the open top of the town, as well as multiple small plumes of smoke. Once they got close to the gates of Ven'rakesh, one of the guard towers turned on a small floodlight and pointed the beam down at them, causing Mewtwo to wince and cover his eyes. A woman's voice shouted harshly from the top of the tower, again in some strange foreign tongue, and Kalana shouted back with equal urgency. A feeling of fear and helplessness coiled through Mewtwo's mind as he stood in the spotlight, imagining multiple weapons pointing down at him.

  
"Shout your name at them if you can, Mewtwo!" Kalana suddenly said to him in a hushed, panicked tone.

  
Mewtwo was grateful that Pokéspeak would at least allow him that. He coughed and cleared his throat, then shouted "Mewtwo!"

  
There was a long, drawn out pause while the tower guards considered what to do next. Then suddenly the spotlight extinguished, a few muffled shouts sounded from behind the door, and then a loud set of clanking noises followed. A latch clicked and then the huge rusty doors slowly slid open, making a loud gritty grinding sound as they dragged across the sandstone. Once it was fully open they were greeted by a rush of guards carrying spears, scimitars, and even a few strange, futuristic looking rifles made out of a weird black metal. All the guards were women with similar skin tones and builds to Kalana, though a few were even taller and more muscular. All wore veils to protect their faces from blowing sand, as well as the parachute pants and halter tops in varying shades of red. There was some divergence in the details of their gear, such as pouches and backpacks and waterskins, but none seemed to be wearing any serious heavy armor of any kind. Most had battle scars of varying sizes and locations, perhaps as a result of this lack of armor, but they all seemed healthy and tough. They certainly didn't seem happy to see Mewtwo, considering the fact that they drew their weapons and pointed them at him while one of them angrily argued with Kalana.

  
Mewtwo remembered what Kalana said about appearing non-threatening, so he swallowed his already bruised pride and cowered as much as he could while clinging to Kalana's side. As humiliating as this was, his survival instinct overrode his ego entirely while he listened to their indecipherable argument.

  
After several painfully long seconds of this shouting match, the guards seemed to agree to allow them to enter, and Kalana braced Mewtwo and began to lead him inside.

  
"Come on Mewtwo, let's go. We're going to take you to a small empty house where you can lie down and rest your leg. I'm going to try to argue your cause in order to get our Medicine Woman to help you, but we'll need approval from the Chief." Kalana explained softly.

  
Mewtwo nodded gratefully and hobbled alongside her silently. He was briefly startled by a dull clang as the town's gate shut behind them, but soon he turned his gaze out to examine the town itself. It was mostly just rows of squat, tiered sandstone buildings that had been carved directly out of the mesa. They were all boxy and cuboid, and had narrow, vertical slit windows. Doors were mostly either made from rusty old black metal or rickety dry wood. Scattered among them were more ramshackle huts that had been cobbled together out of scrap metal, dusty old wood, and stretched animal skins. Some were attached directly to the sides of the sandstone buildings. The streets were lit with torchlight; some sources were ornately carved golden and brass lanterns bolted to buildings, some were merely wooden torches or rusty old oil lamps. Many buildings looked absolutely ancient, having plenty of obvious wear and tear that was patched with simple mortar or rusty metal plates. They entered the main square which was paved with beautiful, ornately painted sandstone and adobe bricks and it was lined on both sides with closed up storefronts and empty market stalls. There was an old, dusty, empty fountain in the center of the square that looked like it hadn't had any water running in it in decades. The fountain did have a statue depicting a stylized, beautiful woman similar to Kalana and the guards; she was holding up a large jug that probably would have acted as the source of the fountain's water if it was running. The statue was decorated beautifully with gold leaf inlays and intricate geometric carvings. The same geometric patterns were evident in the decorations all over the buildings of the town, though some of the buildings had lost their decorations due to neglect and exposure to the elements.

  
The square was mostly quiet as the escort squad marched Mewtwo and Kalana through it; nobody was up this late except more guards. But the noise made by the squad crossing the square caused several doors to creak open as curious souls peered out to see what the ruckus was about. The escorting soldiers took Mewtwo and Kalana over to a smaller home on the bottom of a three tier complex on the Northwestern corner of the square. Kalana opened the old wooden door and led Mewtwo inside. He could see several shelves built into large rectangular indentations carved into the sandstone walls, all of which were now empty. There was a wooden table with two chairs and a small adobe brick oven for food that was empty on the far wall. Opposite of that was a bed frame filled with a heap of straw, which Kalana hauled Mewtwo up onto. He winced and groaned again as the movement sent agony shooting through his leg. At least a touch of relief followed once the pain ended; it was good to relax and get off his feet.

  
"Stay here, I'll be right back." Kalana said.

  
With that she stepped out and left Mewtwo alone. The guards hadn't walked in with him, but he could see them standing just outside the door keeping an eye on him. He heaved a heavy sigh and tried to collect his thoughts. Somehow the little potion that Kalana had given him was keeping him from going into shock, but he knew he'd need to get real medical treatment very soon. He tried again to use Recover on himself, but his reserves were just as dry as before. What was going on here? Was this whole dimension just a giant energy vacuum that sucked psionic power out of him? Did psionics not work at all in this realm? The implications of that were dire both for his leg and for his chances of ever getting home. What would happen if this Chief decided that he was actually a demon after all? Did that word that Kalana had muttered before, "Sulaaq", translate to demon, or was it something even more sinister? He pondered these terrible thoughts in silence until he heard the sound of the wind starting to pick up and howl again. It seemed like the sandstorm wasn't finished with them yet.

  
A few moments later Kalana returned with a much older, hunched over woman wearing ornate golden jewelry. She looked to be in her late 60s or early 70s and had an even more pronounced, hooked nose that almost made her resemble some sort of fairytale witch.  An intricate golden tiara and headdress sat on her head, featuring a massive ruby right over her forehead. She also had a sheathed scimitar strapped to her waist; the handle and cross guard were made with ornately carved gold and another massive ruby was set on the pommel. She eyed Mewtwo with a look of disgust and began to draw her weapon.

  
"No mother, please wait!" Kalana interrupted with an urgent tone. She reached over to put a hand on the Elderly chief's weapon to stop her from drawing it.

  
The Chief glared daggers at Kalana but thankfully refrained from drawing her blade. "You said it speaks? Well, out with it!"

  
Mewtwo winced and stammered out his name again. Every time he spoke it felt more and more like admitting some shameful secret that he'd been hiding. The Chief's gaze immediately softened from angry mistrust into mild shock; she walked over to his bedside and examined him closer.   
"How strange. You look almost exactly like the demons of legend: The Sulaaq. Yet you clearly just spoke, and the old tales were explicitly clear that the Sulaaq were mute. You did not come from their towers did you?"

  
Kalana came over alongside her and interjected. "I found him while I was out alone investigating that weird storm. He was lying in a crater by himself only a few miles away from the Tower, and it seemed like the bizarre red lightning stopped as soon as I found him. He seems to only be able to say his own name, but he can write. Here, look."

  
Kalana handed Mewtwo a blank scroll of parchment and an old, scratched, dinged up fountain pen made of what looked like black plastic. Mewtwo took these and hastily scribbled down a few sentences while the Chief gawked in amazement.

  
"Yes, I can only say my own name. I'm definitely not a demon, I don't mean anyone any harm. Please help me, my leg is going to get infected and I'm going to die!"

  
The chief snatched up the parchment once Mewtwo finished and mumbled something incomprehensible while she read it.

  
"Kalana... I don't know what to think of this. You said it appeared right before the end of the sinister red storm? Don't you realize the ominous nature of such portents?" The Chief asked.

  
"Yes Véma. I was on my last patrol of the night when the storm started and when I headed in its direction I found him. I genuinely believe that he's not a demon. Look at him; he carries no armor, wields no weapon, has no blades or wings or claws, his eyes aren't even red like the tales all described." Kalana replied with a firm conviction.

  
"I suppose you are right. But what are we to do? The rest of the townspeople are going to be terrified."

  
Kalana heaved a heavy sigh. "I think that maybe... This might be a part of the old unfinished legend of the Traveler."

  
Mewtwo grunted in dismay and grabbed the scroll and pen back to write some more. "I'll tell you everything you want about my past and I'll do anything I can to help you, please just spare my life! The pain in my leg is worsening again!"

  
The Chief read his message and then turned to give Kalana a gravely concerned look. "If I let it stay, taking care of it and guarding it will be your responsibility. If it attacks or harms anyone in the village it will be on your shoulders. Do you understand?"

  
Kalana nodded solemnly. "I understand and fully accept the responsibility. I will sacrifice a potion ration of my own to see him healed too."

  
"Very well. I will let this strange...creature stay for now. I must go and fetch out the old scrolls to see if this truly does match the portents of the Traveler as you suspect. We will have to discuss how to proceed from there. In the mean time, I will have Fara brought in to heal him." The chief replied, then quickly departed.

  
Kalana was left alone with Mewtwo for a moment, so she walked over alongside his bed and talked to him a bit.

  
"I am sorry for how harsh the Chief was with you. You must understand that it is her responsibility to protect our people and she takes the task extremely seriously. The Sulaaq vanished mysteriously so long ago that none have been seen in living memory by anyone living in the four tribes, but the ancient legends were very detailed with stories of them and the terrors they wrought upon our ancestors."

  
Mewtwo gripped at the pen and scribbled down another question on the parchment. "Who are the Sulaaq?"

  
"That's a more complicated question than you'd think. They have been called many different names, such as "The Hushed", "The Immortals", and "the Demon Lords of the Many Towers", but nobody actually knows what they are since they're known to be shape-shifters who take the shape of whatever terrifies their victims the most. Scrolls left by our ancestors describe them as totally mute and have depicted them in many different physical forms, including forms similar to yours, but nobody really knows which form is their "true form", if they even have one. So we have called them Demons in the absence of any other answers. They were the ones who decimated the ancient world and turned it into the Vile Desert that we live upon now. With a huge arsenal of strange technology and powerful magic, including a potent mind-controlling incantation, they have ruled over our world of Hypalia for 500 years, sucking the magic out of the land and hoarding the world's riches and resources. My people, known as the Gerudo, are the only surviving free people left in Hypalia. All others have been reduced to mindless thralls of the Sulaaq. They stopped making direct appearances on our world more than 200 years ago, so nobody lives now who has seen one in person, but their thralls still patrol the towers they have built, so we assume they are still here, hiding somewhere."

  
Mewtwo nodded slightly as he took in this information. He was immediately troubled by the idea that these demons could potentially look like him; the fact that they were also mute and could control minds immediately led him to the awful idea that there could be others of his kind out there in this universe who were not nearly as benevolent with their abilities as he was. His train of thought derailed when the door to his little home swung open and another Gerudo woman walked in.

  
"Ah, it's about time Fara! I don't know how much longer the mini-dose that I gave to my friend will last. Can you heal him?" Kalana asked.

  
Fara's eyes widened as she approached Mewtwo's bed and examined him. "Sa'oten! The Chief told me I'd be helping someone fearsome-looking but this is a whole different level from what I expected! What... are you?"

  
"M-Mewtwo!" came Mewtwo's irritated, mumbling reply. He was starting to chafe under the idea that he'd need an interpreter to explain to dozens of people that he was unable to speak any more than that. He glanced over at Kalana with a pleading expression, hoping she'd explain it for him.

  
Kalana thankfully seemed to understand immediately. "His name is Mewtwo. He's nearly mute and can only say his name, but it's not important now. I want you to give him all the treatment he needs. Take it out of my rations."

  
Fara gave Kalana a serious look before replying. "That doesn't seem like the wisest choice to me-"

  
Kalana shot Fara an angry look that caused the medicine woman to stop mid-sentence.

  
"But who am I to question the daughter of the chief. Alright, let me examine the injury."

  
Fara walked up alongside the bed and began to curiously inspect Mewtwo from head to toe, pausing at his wounds. It was clear she was looking at his whole body not just as part of the assessment, but because she was still trying to make heads or tails of what exactly he was. Fara had sharper and more elongated facial features than Kalana, as well as an even bigger nose and striking green eyes. She looked over him with an expression that was mostly cold and dispassionate, albeit with a tinge of curiosity. She seemed to have some sort of wooden staff or walking stick packed away on her back, but otherwise was the first person he'd seen in Ven'rakesh without any sort of deadly weapon on her person. She took off her face veil as she examined him and made a tutting sound as she looked over his leg.

  
"Hmmmm, multiple comminuted compound fractures around the knee, a transverse ankle fracture, and a dislocated hip. This is quite a nasty set of breakages, how did you do this to yourself?" Fara asked.

  
Mewtwo sighed and pointed angrily at his mouth.

  
"Oh, right, forgot you can't speak much. Sorry about that." Fara replied awkwardly, then slid off her backpack and began to rummage around in it.

  
Fara produced a much larger bottle that was filled with what looked like the same thick red substance that Kalana had given to Mewtwo before. This time there was nearly a whole pint of the stuff, and it seemed to be swirling and flowing around inside the bottle on its own as Fara uncorked it. Mewtwo found himself reminded of the potions that humans used to heal Pokémon back home on Earth, though those had to sprayed onto a wound rather than drank.

  
"Here, drink this Red Potion, the dosage should hopefully be enough to fully heal you. If you had just a flesh wound it would heal in mere seconds, but since bones are displaced it will take some time to make them re-set and mend. The potion will relieve most of the pain but this is quite a nasty injury so it won’t take care of all of it. The pain will return in full if you move the injured leg before the recovery process is complete so make sure you keep still. Also make sure you don't waste a single droplet, these are extremely difficult to brew!"

  
Fara handed the bottle to Mewtwo and he greedily chugged it down in a few gulps. Thankfully he felt the effects almost immediately; an intoxicating warmth spread throughout his body quicker than the liquid seemed capable of going down his throat, almost like a supernatural effect. The level and speed of the relief reminded him of the spring in Purity Canyon; it made a simple trainer's potion seem like a placebo by comparison. He had just started to feel the shock starting to creep back in before taking that drink, and now it completely cleared away once more. The room seemed to cool slightly and his vision even seemed to sharpen a little. He felt good enough to start sitting up a little bit, but a touch of recklessness caused him to accidentally move his leg a little bit and a jolt of pain forced him to lay back down.

  
"Hey, I just told you not to move your leg you silly cat! The last thing you need is to disrupt the re-setting of your bones or to cause them to heal wrong. I know it will be boring, but just try to keep still here until the healing is finished. It should be done around sunrise, plus or minus a few hours. You may feel sudden jolts of pain when bones move, that's just a normal part of the process. I'll come check on you after the morning's breakfast tomorrow, alright?" Fara said.

  
Mewtwo simply nodded to her in response, having no other ways to communicate. Satisfied, Fara took the empty potion bottle and strolled out of the house with a quick stride. Now he was alone with Kalana, who walked over to his bedside and gave him a look that was filled with a murky mixture of exhaustion and worry.

  
"Our supplies are often rationed here in Ven'rakesh, but don't worry about me giving away my potion for you. I was going to use it during tomorrow's raid on the nearby Sulaaq Tower, but since I'll be stuck here guarding you for the foreseeable future I won't really be needing it. Again, I'm really sorry for all of this, but at least we managed to get you out of immediate danger."

  
Mewtwo nodded silently in understanding. He didn't necessarily like being cooped up like this for an indefinite amount of time, but it was better than dying of his injuries alone in the dunes.

  
"Since there's only room for one person in this little room, I'll be sleeping on the floor above you tonight. There's a chamber pot under your bed, and if you need anything else, use this to bang on the ceiling above you to call me, ok?"

  
Kalana reached over to the other side of the room and grabbed an old broom and leaned it in the corner next to his bed within reach. He nodded in understanding and then scrawled out a question on the parchment: "Are you going to bed soon?"

  
"I'm going to try, though adjusting my sleep schedule is difficult at the best of times. Normally I do night patrols of the desert surrounding the town to keep watch for signs of Moldugas and now I'll have to readjust my sleep schedule and become diurnal in order to keep an eye on you every day." Kalana replied.

  
"I'm actually nocturnal too." Mewtwo wrote.

  
Kalana smirked a bit when she read it. "Well then, we'll be readjusting to a new schedule together. I need to get to bed now so I can at least try to sleep, but don't hesitate to call me if you need me."

  
With that she climbed up a ladder in the corner of the room, pushed open a wooden hatch in the ceiling, and vanished into the upper floor. Mewtwo couldn't really hear her moving around up there over the howling sound of the sandstorm outside, so he laid there in silence and closed his eyes, trying to sleep. Of course the sandman proved elusive due to his ingrained nocturnal schedule so he ended up letting his mind wander for the better part of an hour. He attempted to use Recover on himself one more time, then resigned himself to powerlessness when it again refused to work. It seemed like he was going to be stuck on this world for the foreseeable future. When sleep finally came to him, it was a restless and uncomfortable sleep that soon filled with nightmares.

 

 

(Art by Syberfab)

 

**Chapter 3: The Gaze of the Sulaaq**

  
Most of Mewtwo's dreams that night were easily forgotten but one lodged itself firmly into his memory so clearly that he would have a hard time banishing it from his thoughts for the foreseeable future. It started with him sitting alone in an empty, dark, shapeless void all by himself. He could see nothing but blackness in every direction, and the floor he was sitting on was dark and indistinguishable. He couldn't focus on its details for long though, since his attention was soon drawn to a massive pair of glowing red demonic eyes that opened in the darkness directly in front of him. A sinking feeling of paralyzing dread flooded over Mewtwo as he gazed into the slitted, sinister pupils that had fixated themselves on him. He distinctly remembered that the dream was utterly silent the entire time; whoever owned those eyes didn't seem interested in attempting to interact with him. But despite the lack of words, the gaze seemed to communicate a profound sense of malice and intelligence as it watched him. The eyes were so colossally large that they would have fit on a 50 foot dragon of some sort. They didn't even blink once during the entire dream, and Mewtwo was filled with a horrible sense that they could see directly into his soul. They seemed to be examining him with the curiosity and hunger of a giant predator that was cautiously sizing up a tasty morsel of prey before moving in for the kill. The kill never came though, the eyes simply continued to watch him until that growing sense of dread became strong enough to drive Mewtwo to wakefulness.

  
Mewtwo bolted upright in bed and involuntarily released a wordless bellow of terror. The swiftness of his movements jarred his leg, which hadn't finished healing yet, and a fresh dose of scorching, stabbing pain caused him to spasm and flinch before falling onto his back into the bed. He moaned in agony while the pain slowly subsided, and a few moments later her heard thumping above him and the creak of the hatch opening in the ceiling. Kalana jumped down into the room to check on him, scimitar drawn and ready to face an intruding foe. She scanned the room rapidly and then sheathed her weapon when she saw that there was no burglar in sight.

  
"Are you alright?" Kalana asked, coming up alongside Mewtwo's bed.

  
Mewtwo groggily grasped for the pen and parchment that were laying on the floor next to his bed, missing a few times due to the pain clouding his mind. Kalana thankfully reached down to help him, placing the items into his grasping hands. He rubbed his eyes then scrawled out a sloppy "Bad dreams" on the parchment.

  
Kalana, who was no longer wearing her face veil, nodded in understanding and seemed to completely relax. "Let me guess, you dreamed of a gigantic pair of glowing red eyes, yes?"

  
Mewtwo's eyes widened in shock and he nodded enthusiastically. "Yes! How did you know?!" He wrote.

  
"It is unfortunately a common phenomenon out here on the Vile Desert. Everyone shares this dream and it happens at least 3 or 4 times a week, with some unfortunate souls seeing it nightly without rest. We call it "The Gaze of the Sulaaq" because of the terror it instills." Kalana explained.

  
"Is it some form of-" Mewtwo tried to write, but ran out of space on the page and had to flip it over. "-spying technology or psychic power?"

  
Kalana shook her head. "Not that we know of. It's been documented in historical records for hundreds of years. Even our nomadic ancestors who were actively pursued by Sulaaq slavers during the days after the fall of the old world were watched by the Gaze, but they still managed to evade their pursuers. If the Gaze is some sort of spying technique, then the Sulaaq actively avoid using whatever intelligence they glean from it. My mother believes it's nothing more than an intimidation tactic, or some kind of curse. At least the fact that an outsider like you can suffer from it confirms that the Gaze isn't something only Gerudos can suffer from. Though now that I think about it, I don't think I yet asked where you came from, or why you're here."

  
Mewtwo winced a bit. How would he explain his story to Kalana without his powers to back it up? If he told her the whole truth about coming from another universe she might not even understand it completely. But he had a sinking feeling that she would immediately sense his dishonesty if he tried to lie though, there was an incredibly sharp, insightful quality to her gaze that he couldn't deny.

  
"It's...a long story. I don't want to lie to you since you saved my life, but there are elements to it that are so implausible and outlandish that it's unlikely you'll believe me." He wrote.

  
Kalana gazed down at the parchment and knitted her brow before turning her sharp eyes on him. "That is a fair concern, but I am honestly very curious. I haven't really managed to get an ounce of sleep yet tonight, so why don't you tell me your story and I'll suspend disbelief for the sake of hearing the whole thing."

  
Mewtwo hesitated a little, then wrote "I'll need a few more extra pages."

  
That got a chuckle from Kalana, who headed upstairs for a moment to fetch a whole bundle for him to write on. Mewtwo hesitated a little bit, his hands shaking as he gripped the dusty paper, and he began to write. He had to lean sideways onto the little table next to his bed, which made the whole thing cramped and uncomfortable, but he was more concerned with what Kalana would think of him once she knew the truth. He felt so helpless and vulnerable with his powers stripped away, so he had to leave all of his ego behind and bare himself to her in a terrifyingly honest way. He decided that it'd be a much better idea to engage conversationally rather than just dumping a long textual story onto her all at once, so he wrote in bits and let her respond.

  
"Have you ever heard the theory that there are many different worlds in the cosmos aside from just this one? That there could be countless realities all existing in parallel?"

  
Kalana gave him a confused look and tilted her head to the side. "Yes, old legends have talked about such things many times. If I remember my history lessons, there used to be stories about a separate realm from our own called The Sacred Realm, where the gods used to hide artifacts of untold power. How is this relevant though?"

  
"It's relevant because it's true. I came from one such world, separate from this one, hoping to find a new home. But I was reckless and foolish; I left without any sort of supplies or preparation and I didn't know what sort of dangers I could expect. Some sort of great maelstrom robbed me of my powers and pulled me into this world, and I blacked out. I must have fallen while unconscious, leading to these injuries here."

  
"Ok, putting aside the fact that confirmation of the existence of parallel worlds is extremely huge news, why did you leave your home world?" Kalana asked.

  
Mewtwo heaved a much heavier sigh and his hand shook nervously as he wrote. "I left because I needed to protect the people of my world from myself. I am a bloodthirsty murderer. As much as I have tried and tried and tried to control my own anger, I have failed on many occasions and have killed multiple people during my blind, unstoppable rages. I didn't want to let myself harm anyone else."

  
Mewtwo expected Kalana's gaze to harden into disgust or contempt when she read this, but much to his surprise she seemed to withhold judgement. "What happened to drive you to such a state? Surely you would not kill unprovoked. There's something about you that seems...unlike the cold-blooded monsters of our world that kill for pleasure. You actually seem consumed by guilt over what you've done."

  
Mewtwo took some time to ponder how to reply. Gary's death was so fresh in his mind that he was still completely consumed with the guilt he felt over it, so it seemed strange trying to find justification for the things he had done. "The first time, it was humans who had created me. I was not naturally born, humans used technology to create me and give me immense psychic power in hopes that they could use me as a living weapon of war. They were callous in their treatment of me, especially their leader Giovanni, who regarded me with no more thought or compassion than an inanimate metal sword. I killed them to escape the servitude they were imposing upon me."

  
"Did you try to find a peaceful way to escape their control before you resorted to bloodshed?" Kalana asked.

  
"I..." Mewtwo paused and then scratched it out. "No, not nearly enough. I was engulfed in rage at their malice and cruelty. I completely destroyed their base of operations with dozens of men and women inside it, when I could have merely flown away with my powers and not engaged. It was an act of mass-murder I now sorely regret."

  
"I see." Kalana replied softly, then looked down at the floor with a wistful expression. "You mentioned this as only the first time you took a life?"

  
Mewtwo paused for a brief moment to consider telling her about Ash, but then thought better of it. Even if he had been clinically dead for a short time during the New Island incident, it didn't seem fair to count him since he had been brought back by the Pokemon all around him at the time. Besides, the ordeal with Gary was far fresher in his mind. He drew an unsteady breath and continued.

  
"Yes, there was a second time. Another human, who used technology to imprison me and protect himself from my powers. He too wanted to use me as a tool for his own gain, but I should have known better this time. When I killed the humans who created me, I was still young and foolish and I did not understand the moral implications of killing. But since then I have educated myself and I consciously knew my rage was my greatest weakness. This human, Gary, he taunted me with my own failings and used them to try and trap me in a bluff, hoping he could harness my powers where the others had failed. Despite all my time spent trying to better myself, I was still consumed by fury and killed him too. That's why I left, Kalana. I do not deserve to share a world with people when I can barely even control myself."

  
Kalana was quiet for a few moments when she read this. Still she didn't seem to scorn him, but instead she reached over and put one of her rough, calloused hands on his. "I understand. You at the very least have regret for what you have done, it proves you are not a monster."

  
Kalana paused for a little bit longer and a conflicted look came over her face. Mewtwo felt the urge to write a reply thanking her for her charitable assessment of his character, but he didn't want to pull his hand away from hers. There was a warmth of kindness to that touch that he hadn't felt since Mew had sat on his shoulder last time they met. Finally she seemed to conjure up the strength to speak again.

  
"Mewtwo, I understand the strength it must have taken to confess that to a stranger. Especially one who basically holds your life and your future in her hands like I do. I appreciate that. May I tell you something of my own now in return?"

  
Mewtwo nodded. He was filled with a strange upwelling of emotions from witnessing someone who was basically a stranger showing such compassion and understanding to him.

  
"I...also have some blood on my hands. Perhaps not nearly as much as you do, but my own is no less haunting."

  
Kalana stood up and walked over to the singular window in the wall next to the door in order to look outside while she talked, as if she couldn't really bring herself to look at him while she shared her own shame with him.

  
"I had a little sister once. Her name was Ruru, and she was the most kindhearted and charitable little girl you could ever hope to meet. She always automatically assumed the best of everyone she met, she never once let herself stay angry at anyone who wronged her, and she had an unfailingly optimistic nature despite the desolate times our people live in. She always looked up to me as a role model since I was her older sister, and I got to be more of a hero to her than anyone else since our mother had to be the stern authority figure as the Chief of our tribe. Ruru also had a very fiery spirit when it came to combat, she loved to fight and was always trying to learn more. She tried every single weapon she got her hands on, and more than once got in trouble for sneaking a real scimitar to play with when she knew she was too young to handle one. Needless to say, it was incessant. Every single day she tried to get me to take her with me on my patrols out in the desert. She wanted to watch me fight, wanted to see a real Lizalfos or even a dreaded Molduga. She also thought she could take them on herself, as youths often tend to do. Needless to say it was out of the question, she was only 18 years old at the time and she couldn't even lift a real Gerudo spear."

  
Kalana saw Mewtwo giving her a weird, confused look when she mentioned Ruru's age. She chuckled a bit and said "Sorry, I thought I explained that our people are long-lived, but I guess it doesn't necessarily follow that it also means that we age slower. 18 years for a Gerudo is equivalent to 9 years for a human."

  
Mewtwo hummed thoughtfully as he grasped the explanation. Unable to speak, he gestured to Kalana to continue her story.

  
"Well...one evening two years ago I was getting ready for my nightly patrol while our mother was down with a fever and unable to keep an eye on us. Ruru was extremely insistent that she come with me on my patrol, to the point where I was becoming very angry. Stressed over mother's illness, I decided that maybe it would do her some good if I brought Ruru along to keep her out of mother's hair so she could sleep. I was overconfident and cocky, figuring that I could handle any threats that came our way. As you can guess, things did not go well."

  
Kalana reached down and grabbed the beautiful little circular brass shield that she carried on her hip and unbelted it so she could hold it up and examine the decorations on the outward-facing side.

  
"Normally the thralls of the Sulaaq don't leave their towers. They have a network of underground tunnels connecting all of their various bases of operation so that they don't suffer under the heat of the desert sun. But for some reason that night, they were out in a convoy riding in their accursed black steel vehicles. In the darkness of the moonless night we couldn't see them until we had blundered right into their path. One of their vehicles knocked me off my feet, breaking multiple bones in my body and nearly killing me outright, while Ruru thankfully avoided any collision. The impact knocked the vehicle sideways enough that they stopped their convoy to investigate. I scrambled to put my earplugs in barely just in time before their mind-control Incantation flooded on through the magical sound-producing devices on their vehicles...but Ruru hadn't brought any earplugs. We didn't plan to go anywhere near a Sulaaq tower so she didn't think she'd need a pair. I had to watch as the magic enthralled her and turned her into another one of their mindless slaves. I tried to get up to grab her so they couldn't take her away, but both my legs were broken and I couldn't do much more than crawl. The thralls ignored me entirely and just took her aboard one of their vehicles, then drove away. I've never seen her again since...but I know her fate was not to live long. The Sulaaq work most of their thralls to death in mines underneath their towers. Only those who are strong enough to be made into guards for the towers manage to escape that fate, and she was far too young to be made a guard."

  
Mewtwo wished dearly that he could speak. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't her fault, that she shouldn't blame herself for the evil deeds of others. But his muteness stymied him. Tears welled up in his eyes and he tried to mumble wordlessly at her, gesturing to her to come over so he could write his words to her. But she remained over on the opposite side of the room, still gazing at her shield so she wouldn't have to face him. She traced her fingers over a dent in the shield quietly until she could work out the next few words.

  
"She'd still be here, alive and happy, if I had just not let her come with me, Mewtwo. Nobody in the town blames me for her loss, not even mother. Hah, normally she of all people with her stern, authoritarian discipline should have been the one to chastise me for my mistakes, but we were all busied with our mourning. Despite all their understanding and support I still struggle with that feeling of guilt. I know just as well as anyone that I shouldn't put the misdeeds of the Sulaaq onto my own shoulders, but I'm the one who has to live with the image of all the life and will draining out of my baby sister's eyes as those wretched slavers turned her into their automaton. I carry that weight and I always will. So I guess...the reason why I'm telling you all this is because I understand the pain you carry with you too, Mewtwo. If I had strange mental powers and the ability to find other worlds, I very well might have left our world of Hypalia behind during the worst hours of my mourning for Ruru."

  
Kalana finally reached down to strap her shield back onto her back and then walked back over to Mewtwo's bedside. When she looked at him again, he could see she had the beginnings of tears welling up in her eyes, but she quickly wiped them away and regained control.

  
"Mewtwo, these rages of yours, do you believe that they might come again and drive you to hurt the people of Ven'rakesh?"

  
Mewtwo turned and wrote some more. "I can't promise that my rages are gone. But for some reason, my psychic powers don't seem to work in this world. Without them, my primary ability to act on my anger is gone. All I'm left with is a weak, untrained body that you and your guards could easily overpower."

  
Kalana chuckled darkly as she read. "Well, I do know why your abilities won't work. That's the fault of the Sulaaq. They have built hundreds of these massive towers all over the face of the world, each of which sucks every ounce of magical energy out of the world for hundreds of miles around it. Nobody can cast any spells of any kind so long as the tower nearest to them stands operational. They probably sucked out your abilities too, even if they are under a different name than magic. So at least, for as long as the nearest local tower stands, you will remain powerless."

  
Mewtwo felt a sudden understanding click into place in his mind. This must have been what caused the massive energy-draining vortex that he had stumbled into inside the interdimensional space! Of course that relief of understanding was immediately replaced by a mixture of other intense realizations: He would be safe from ever worrying about killing these Gerudo people with his powers, but he might be trapped on this world for the rest of his life if he didn't figure out a way to attack the Sulaaq. He scribbled out a few more frantic lines of text as his brain spun with all this information.

  
"Kalana, I know that I can't wash away all your guilt with some magical eloquent wording in one go. If there was such an easy way to fight off those sorts of inner demons I would have used them on myself long ago. But the people of Ven'rakesh are right, you're not a murderer. You're just a normal, everyday woman who was trying to be the best big sister that she could and made a flawed judgment call. I think, if Ruru was as altruistic and forgiving as you said, she'd have forgiven you and wouldn't have wanted you to feel so sad about what happened either."

  
When Kalana read that bit, she didn't reply with words. Instead, she gently leaned down and wrapped her arms around Mewtwo and embraced him. He didn't hear any sobbing from her, but he did feel the moisture of a few of her tears soaking into his shoulder. For that brief moment he allowed himself a few tears as well. He'd never truly been hugged before, not like this. It was a new experience for him and he didn't know what he might have said even if he did have his power of speech back. So he did the only thing he could do, he gently reached up to put his arms around Kalana to return the hug. It lasted for only a few seconds, but those fleeting little motes of time left a more profound imprint on Mewtwo than he realized. Though when Kalana drew back to let go, she accidentally bumped against his leg, sending searing explosions of pain through it.

  
Mewtwo spasmed and grabbed the edges of the bed as he bellowed wordlessly in agony. Kalana recoiled back in shock, a guilty look coming over her face. "Oh Goddesses I'm so sorry Mewtwo, I didn't mean to!"

  
Mewtwo nodded and gestured at her, hoping to communicate that it was nothing and he didn't blame her. He looked down through the haze of pain at his knee and saw that the bone spur had retreated several inches back into his leg now, and his hip seemed to have shifted back into place again, but there was still plenty of healing left to be done. Once the pain cleared enough to write he sloppily scrawled out "It's ok, it was an accident."

  
"Still, I should let you try to sleep. You're not going to heal as fast if I'm down here keeping you awake with my sob stories, and you can tell me the rest of your story tomorrow. I'll see you in the morning, ok?"

  
With that Kalana quickly climbed the ladder and vanished into the upper floor again, leaving Mewtwo alone with his thoughts. He had to admit to himself that she was right but...he missed that moment of connection they shared when they hugged. For the first time, it felt like he actually had earned a real friend. He laid back and stared at the ceiling, dreading another staring match with the Gaze of the Sulaaq, but eventually the exhaustion of all his experiences caught up to him and eased him back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (All art used in this fanfic has been created either by fans of the story or by artists commissioned for the story, and has been used explicitly with permission from all creators involved.)
> 
> (Also, special thanks to Lambda, Recurve, Jarnsaxa, and MewtwoStruckBack for editing and revision assistance on this chunk!)


	3. Book 1: Desert Wind - Chunk 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again dear readers, apologies for how many months it took for me to get this chunk out to you all! Returning readers will know this isn't surprising, I'm nothing if I'm not slower than a Slowbro swimming in molasses at the south pole. Hell, I still technically haven't finished the original First Edition of The Travelers Trilogy as it stands on ffnet, and I think that my work on its latest chunk has been languishing under a writer's block for more than a year. But, my returning readers also know that I never ever give up no matter how rough things have gotten. I started posting this whole trilogy almost 17 goddamn years ago now and I still am working on it, and I certainly have no plans to stop until it's finished!
> 
> That being said, this chunk took more time than the last one since I decided to completely restructure the first few chapters in Book 1, and that restructuring necessitated a total binning of the existing text and a rewrite from scratch. None of the original text from the rough draft is here, but I think I like this new plot structure better. Now Mewtwo is actually going to EARN the trust of the Gerudos with his actions rather than them just taking him on his word and Kalana's mere hunch. Read on to see what I mean!

** Chapter 4: Hospitality **

"You're not listening to me!" 

The words sharply shocked Mewtwo awake from his fitful sleep. Even though there was a floor between him and the source of the shout it was loud enough to penetrate his mind and jolt him awake with full clarity. Mewtwo sputtered and spat out a few stray pieces of straw that had found their way into his mouth while he slept and craned his neck up to listen. He could make out two voices arguing angrily, switching between English and that strange Gerudo language, and one of those voices was recognizable as Kalana. They quieted themselves down a little bit as if they were aware of the risk of waking Mewtwo up, but it was too late; he was up now and he could still hear them.

Mewtwo cautiously sat himself upright to try to listen. Most of their words were too quiet for him to understand with the floor in the way, and half the words that were audible through it were in the Gerudo tongue, as if they were swapping back and forth between languages haphazardly. Mewtwo was unsure whether they were doing this to prevent him from eavesdropping or because it was a natural habit, but it was driving him up the wall with curiosity. In his single-minded desire to figure out what they were saying he forgot his injury and began to stand up, and for a few brief moments he didn't even realize what it meant when he experienced zero pain. He didn't realize it until he was standing up straight and pressing his ear against the ceiling. His eyes caught sight of some of the dried blood flaking off of his now pristine, intact knee and a huge flooding feeling of happiness and relief rushed over him. He began to walk around the room just to test it out, then he did a little bit of a dance just to make 100% sure. A few tears of relief began to form in his eyes and he wordlessly laughed out loud in the absence of any other way to verbalize his happiness. 

The laughter immediately caused the argument on the floor above to grind to a halt. Mewtwo noticed the sudden silence and sheepishly quieted down. He sat himself on the bed as the hatch in the ceiling opened with a loud but quick creak of old wood. Kalana and Elder Hadara climbed down one after the other, faces still slightly flushed from all their arguing.

"Sorry if we woke you, is your leg finished healing?" Kalana asked.

Mewtwo nodded and smiled, then plucked up his pen and paper from the nightside stand to begin writing a reply. Before he could get more than a few words in he was interrupted by Kalana.

"Mewtwo, I was pondering your issues with speech this morning and I remembered an old trinket I used to use when I was younger. It's an Amulet of Speechcraft that I owned as a child. I figured you could use it now."

Kalana produced a small bronze amulet on a chain from one of her pockets and offered it to Mewtwo. There was a dull, cloudy old ruby inlaid in the center of the amulet that was laced with tiny cracks. It was genuinely unimpressive, especially since the metal was filthy and tarnished. Mewtwo eyed it with a confused look, unsure of what this had to do with his inability to speak.

"Go on, take it. Enchanted items still work despite the drain from the Sulaaq Towers." Kalana said, still not realizing Mewtwo wasn't following her logic.

"Kalana, look at him, he doesn't even know what you mean. Sulaaq can't understand our world's magical items or spells, so stop trying to push this."

Kalana rounded on her and snapped "For the last time mother, he is NOT a Sulaaq! You of all people should know this, you studied the scrolls and legends!"

"And you should know based on what I taught you that there were indeed a scattered few stories of the Sulaaq Chosen speaking with their strange form of magic, rare as it was! You cannot prove it either way, especially since they have a history of altering the minds of their victims!" Hadara snapped right back.

"Gods you are so stubborn! At least let me try!" Kalana retorted, then suddenly opened the chain on the amulet and reached around Mewtwo to put it on him.

Kalana accidentally brushed Mewtwo's second neck while she was putting it on him, causing pain to arc across his head and back. He instinctively shouted "Ouch!", not realizing that this was the first time his mouth had physically uttered anything other than his own name.

"Ah, sorry. I didn't realize that thing on the back of your head was so sensitive. Here, it's working though! Try talking to me!" 

Mewtwo gradually relaxed after wincing away from the touch. He didn't feel any different than before, there wasn't any weird tingling of energy or sudden epiphanies. He did notice Hadara standing back and giving them a stink eye though, as if she was thoroughly disgusted by what she was seeing. He was starting to feel more than a little nervous again thanks to the steely, resolute disdain in her eyes. He stuttered a little as he tried to speak, but then somehow he actually managed to force his mouth to obey his mind and come up with words.

"What..." He paused, straining a little. "How is jewelry doing this?" 

Mewtwo's words were still stilted and unnatural sounding, like a robot that was unable to properly understand intonation or inflection, but he had done it! He had spoken English without using telepathy for the first time in his life! Kalana held out her hands to gesture toward him as if this had proved a point.

"See Véma? He can speak! Now stop with your cruel skepticism, I'm sure we can figure out a way to keep the townsfolk calm until we figure out a way to help him get back home."

"Have you even asked him where his home is?" Hadara asked with a scowl.

"Yes! But it's a place only magic can reach, so he'll have to stay at least until the next tower raid."

Mewtwo worked through the difficulty of his inexperience with speech and interrupted them. "If you really want me to leave...I will leave. I can tell when I am not wanted."

Kalana shook her head and turned to him to respond. "No! You are not a Sulaaq. My mother is just being stubborn and trying to protect our people. I will make sure-"

Hadara then interrupted her with a far more stern tone. "Kalana! You are forgetting your place! Just because you are my daughter does not mean I will let you trod all over my authority. Don't talk about me as if I wasn't standing right behind you!"

"Véma you are being unreasonable! Why did you change your mind after believing me and saying he could stay last night?!" Kalana shouted angrily.

"Because I re-read the Legend of the Traveler overnight! If he really is the one mentioned in the legend then there's no way to know whether he is destined to be the one to save the world or the one to destroy it! You should remember that legend was incomplete; without the ending we have no way to know for sure what the seer saw. Do you really want to gamble the lives of everyone on Hypalia over a 50/50 chance? A coin flip?"

"Ha, the world is already a ruined, uninhabitable wasteland. The real question is whether you want to throw away what could be our only chance to restore it!" Kalana shouted back.

"Stop this!" Mewtwo interrupted loudly.

The two arguing Gerudos paused their heated bickering and turned to listen. Mewtwo was starting to feel the words coming to him more easily now, so he responded with a far more fluent tone. "I'm not going to be responsible for causing this rift between the two of you. You healed me and saved my life like I asked so I will leave in gratitude without demanding anything else. Take me to the gates and I will go peacefully."

"Good. I will make a short speech in an hour to gather the attention of the townsfolk so you can slip away unnoticed. Kalana, I command you to take him to the North gate and release him into the desert at that time." Hadara snapped, then turned and promptly opened the door to leave.

"Only if I get to send provisions with him! I will not send him to his death!" Kalana shouted after her.

Hadara paused in the door frame and gripped it so hard that her knuckles turned white. "Fine." Then she left, slamming the door behind her.

Kalana turned to Mewtwo with tears in her eyes. "Listen, you don't have to do this! I can still change her mind. Give me an hour to calm her and make her see reason."

Mewtwo shook his head. "I will not risk destroying the relationship between you and your mother, Kalana. Not after the kindness and understanding you have shown me. If you're going to give me food and water then I will be fine, I understand how to take care of myself."

Of course Mewtwo was fooling himself when he said this, he had no idea how anything worked on this strange planet 'Hypalia', for all he knew there could be whole armies of the monsters that Kalana had fought out there when she rescued him. He was again rushing headlong into a likely lethal situation that he had no understanding of, and this time he knew it far more clearly in the back of his mind. Kalana seemed to understand it too, judging by the firm, knitted brow in the expression she gave him.

"Do you at least have a weapon?"

"I have..." Mewtwo began, but then remembered the fact that his powers were disabled. "No, nothing."

"This is suicide Mewtwo. The Moldugas will feast upon your corpse the moment you take one wrong turn in the Vile Desert."

"Then give me a weapon and tell me the safest path to take to reach the nearest Sulaaq tower." Mewtwo replied firmly.

Kalana seemed to realize what Mewtwo was planning at this point. "You're mad!"

"It's the only way. If I can break the device that's draining my powers then I can truly handle myself for the rest of the trip home."

Kalana heaved a sorrowful sigh that must have weighed several tons. She buried her head in her hands now, truly feeling defeated by the circumstances, then stood and began to head toward the door. "I'll be back in a bit. Wait here."

* * *

Kalana heaved with all her might at the huge wooden spokes of the wheel that operated the North Gate of Ven'rakesh. The massive patchwork steel doors groaned open as the chains took their weight and swung them inward. The towering dunes of orange sand came into view outside the cool sandstone walls of the town. Mewtwo, who had been outfitted with a Scimitar, a shield, a thick brown leather cloak, and a bag of supplies, stepped forward past the gates and paused outside the threshold. He stood quietly, observing the vast empty stretches before him. There was a sudden clash of rapidly clanking chains behind him, followed by a set of rapid footsteps and a thunderous BOOM as the gates slammed themselves shut. Mewtwo turned around and saw Kalana coming up alongside him on this side of the gate. He boggled a little in shock and spoke.

"What are you doing Kalana?!"

"I'm coming with you."

"That's insane. You know what I'm walking into is basically a suicide mission!"

"Yes, and that's why I'm coming with you. I can't send you to your death in good conscience. If I'm there with you to guide you, then you will stand a very good chance of surviving and making it home. I've raided this tower hundreds of times over the course of my life and I've blown the drain device every time. I know the layout of the interior by heart, including all the weapons emplacements and security measures. You'd get shot to death at the first emplacement if you blundered in there blind, but I can get you around every single obstacle unscathed as long as you listen closely to everything I say and don't make any mistakes."

Mewtwo stood there speechless for a few seconds before he could bring himself to reply. "What will your mother say?"

"To hell with what she thinks! She can strip me of my rank and toss me in a cell for all I care. I'm not going to let her send an innocent person to their death. Just because you look like a Sulaaq doesn't mean we have a right to send you to your doom without any sort of trial or due process. It's disgusting and totally unlike her, and I won't stand by and just let it happen. Besides, I followed her command to the letter; I took you to the gate and escorted you out. She didn't explicitly forbid me from coming with you, and it's too late now anyway. I let the gate shut itself behind me, we'd need to call the other guards away from her speech to open it and she'd find out and punish me regardless. I might as well help you now and earn that punishment."

Kalana pointed back at the shut gate to emphasize her point. She was right, there were no external handles or latches of any sort. They'd have to climb the walls to get back into Ven'rakesh at this point and Mewtwo was not exactly confident in his climbing skills. He looked over at the gate, then back at Kalana, then heaved a weighty sigh of his own.

"You definitely got your stubbornness from your mother. Alright, lead the way. How long of a walk is it?" Mewtwo asked.

Kalana set off briskly and pointed out toward the horizon at the north. "Not far, only 5 hours walk. Here, you can see the tower's silhouette over the horizon already. It gets even clearer from the crest of the tallest dunes. We're fortunate to be setting out midday, we'll have more than enough time to reach the tower before sunset when the Moldugas start leaving their territories to hunt for food."

"Will you have enough time to make the second leg back home before then, assuming we succeed?" Mewtwo asked as he rushed to keep up with her.

Kalana shook her head grimly. "Maybe, if we fight quickly through the tower and don't tolerate any delays. That's not important though, I know how to handle Moldugas, you don't. Don't worry about me."

"Hey, you're risking your life to save mine, the very least I can do is worry about you after I'm gone. But just what is a Molduga anyway?" Mewtwo replied.

"A colossal, carnivorous desert fish, easily the size of an entire sand dune by itself. It swims through the sands like water and hunts for prey, eating anything that moves. It's perfectly capable of swallowing an entire person in one gulp without trouble, and it tracks your position by sensing the vibrations caused by your footsteps. You can temporarily lose it by remaining completely still, but it can and will wait you out if it knows you're somewhere nearby." Kalana explained with a grim expression.

"How exactly do your people survive if these monsters are commonplace here?!"

"Because the Vile Desert has numerous large sandstone outcroppings and mesas strewn about. Moldugas can't swim through stone, and Ven'rakesh was dug into a solid sandstone mesa specifically to avoid their attacks. It also helps that Moldugas are extremely territorial and only leave their territories to hunt for food for an hour or so at sunrise and sunset. If you travel during the middle of the day or night and avoid their territories you will be perfectly fine, at least assuming you don't get ambushed by the other desert-dwelling beasts out there."

The two of them crested the first major dune outside of the town's limits together and Mewtwo peered out across the desert at the dark silhouette of what looked like some sort of black steel skyscraper. A pit of dread began to take shape in the bottom of his stomach and began its slow, terrible gnawing work at him as he looked.

"Those beasts usually avoid direct daylight due to the heat, which is why we're probably going to make it to the tower uninterrupted. But the thralls of the Sulaaq are far more dangerous than any beast. I'm going to need you sharp and ready to kill with all the speed and skill that you can muster. I can't have you hesitating, the thralls certainly won't. Here, take this." Kalana said.

Kalana paused at the crest of the dune and handed Mewtwo a small handheld pistol of some sort. He'd never seen anything like it, it was far more advanced than any of the pistols he'd seen humans wielding at home. It was made of some sort of menacing black steel and had no cylinders or hammer, just a smooth seamless barrel and some sort of glass tip on the end. It was decorated with menacing black spines and had what looked like a battery pack on a sliding mechanism on the butt of the handle.

"What in Arceus's name is this?"

"Sulaaq weapons, stolen from the same tower we're going to raid today." Kalana replied simply, then started to make her way down the dune.

"How does it work?" Mewtwo asked.

"Simple. Aim the barrel at your target as accurately as you can and then pull the trigger. It's good for ten shots before the reservoir is exhausted."

"I understand that much, I mean what sort of technology does it operate on? This looks nothing like the black powder weapons that I'm so used to seeing humans use."

"I don't know really, the Sulaaq technology is far beyond our ability to reverse engineer or understand. Most people just assume it's a different form of magic than the magic of our world, especially since the weapon fires a stream of glowing light similar to a lot of offensive magical spells."

"Fascinating. I assume that the larger rifle strapped to your back operates similarly?" Mewtwo asked, pointing to the menacing black steel gun she wore underneath her shield and scimitar.

"Indeed, and that one gets 30 shots as opposed to the pistol's 10. But we don't have any more of the magical storage reservoirs that they rely on, so we'll have to make them count."

Mewtwo nodded in understanding and let the conversation fade away as they continued to trek through the dunes. The sunlight was beating down mercilessly and the heat was starting to get to Mewtwo already, but he was determined to prove to Kalana that he was more than just a helpless, mewling weakling. After what felt like a few hours to him he chimed in with a question.

"What's the plan of attack?"

"Once we get close we'll start by peering over the top of one of the dunes around the tower to scout out the layout of the ground around the base of the structure. Sandstorms cause the dunes to constantly and significantly shift, so approach routes change every time. There's almost always a path to sneak up to the base of the tower using the dunes as cover against their turrets. Once we get to the base of the tower we'll be inside the minimum arc for turret fire and unreachable to them, so we'll climb the spikes on the tower to reach the first balcony on the second floor and engage the thralls manning the turrets in melee combat. Stab them with the scimitar I gave you but don't throw them off the tower. We'll use their dead hands to unlock the external doors and get inside, since the locks read the hands somehow to prove identity."

"What if there's no safe cover to reach the base of the tower?" Mewtwo asked. 

"Then we'll dive into the oasis next to the base of the tower and swim. Their beam weapons don't penetrate water very far so as long as we don't break the surface during approach then we'll be safe. I've done this several times."

"Will the weapons be alright if they get wet?" Mewtwo asked.

"Yes, they're thankfully waterproof."

"I see. What then, once we get inside?"

"We'll pass through a short hallway and then enter the main inner shaft chamber. It's a huge vertical hollow room that goes from the bottom to the top and it has a huge column of conduits in the center of the gap. There's water channels built on the conduits to gather the condensation and pipe it off, this also makes the whole pillar of conduits perilously slippery and impossible to climb. Every floor has a set of suspended flooring platforms in a circle around the inner walls of this chamber, and the gap in the center around the conduits is railed. We'll enter this chamber and head left toward the north side where the entrance to the main stairwell is located, then make our way all the way up to the top. There are elevators, but those get shut down by security the moment an attack is detected. Once we get to the top floor we'll have to fight past a large gun emplacement that guards the door to the room where the drain device is held. We'll have to shoot around the edge of a wall and take out the gunner, then go to the device and plant a bomb on it. Once the bomb goes off you'll be free to head home." Kalana summarized.

"Alright, makes sense. Is there anything else that I should know?"

"Yes, the whole facility will be permeated with the mind-controlling audio incantation that I mentioned earlier. You and I will both need to wear dense fabric earplugs sealed with wax to avoid becoming enthralled. We'll have to communicate with hand signals until we detonate the bomb. Once the drain device is destroyed the power to the whole facility will shut down, taking the incantation with it."

"Then you're going to need to teach me those hand signals before we get there." Mewtwo replied.

"Of course, it's a good thing we have a few hours. Now pay attention, this should help distract you from the heat too."

** Chapter 5: Kiharé **

Hot desert wind whipped through their cloaks as Mewtwo and Kalana slowly crept up to the top of a dune and peered over the crest. The sun was getting low on the horizon now but it still had plenty of heat left to broil the barren sands with before reaching the horizon. The menacing form of the Sulaaq Tower stretched up above them for hundreds of feet, feeding at the pit of dread that was still churning in Mewtwo's gut. Whoever had built this thing clearly wanted to intimidate and terrify the people of Hypalia; the architecture was utterly demonic in nature. Burnished jet black metal composed the majority of the structure, which was decorated with menacing vertical spikes that faced upwards and downwards. Some red electric lights were built into the surface of the tower, glowing softly and periodically blinking. The top of the tower had six massive spines pointing directly upwards, as well as two huge horizontal arms jutting out near the top. The surface of the whole thing looked heavily armored and high tech beneath the sinister design. Two things immediately caught his attention though; the outward-facing turrets on the second floor balcony were all abandoned, and there was a huge waste pipe at the base of the tower that was dumping out what appeared to be clear water into a nearby oasis. Some desert palm trees, shrubs, and even what looked like watermelons were all growing on the sandy soil around the oasis.

Mewtwo wanted to ask Kalana about the water but they were close enough to be within range of the incantation and thus had to have their earplugs in. Kalana was squinting suspiciously at the empty balconies and clutching her pistol. She swiveled her head around as if checking for a surprise attack from another angle, then reached down and grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it into the air above them. Nothing happened at all; no gunfire blasted and none of the turrets moved. Kalana watched for a few more seconds, then gradually stood up atop the dune. Despite her showing herself clearly out in the open, nothing happened. The sheer brazenness of this move caused Mewtwo's heart start to pound in his chest. The sound of it was deafening thanks to the earplugs reflecting it back into his ears.

Kalana gave Mewtwo the gesture to follow her and began to make a run for the base of the tower, right through the open. Mewtwo swallowed his fear and sprinted after her, catching up quickly thanks to the strength of his legs and his broad gait. Kalana landed with her back against the tower, avoiding the spikes carefully, and stared up at the balcony above them for several seconds. She gestured for him to wait and he obliged happily, pressing his back against the cold steel surface of the tower while catching his breath. He wasn't exactly in the best physical shape after using telekinesis to do everything for his entire life, so the minutes were more than necessary for him to recuperate. Nothing happened though, and once Kalana was satisfied she gave him the "Wait here" signal and then equipped a set of tough looking metal gauntlets to protect her hands before climbing up the tower using the sharp spikes on the surface as handholds. With surprising speed and dexterity she hauled herself up and vanished onto the balcony. Mewtwo held his breath and waited in silent anticipation, unable to see what was happening. 

Eventually Kalana reappeared unharmed and climbed down the tower to land on the sand next to him. She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down onto the sand as if taking cover and then Mewtwo felt and heard the muffled thud of a nearby explosion. Thankfully no hot metal shards rained down on him, but he did feel the heat and the pressure wave buffet him from above. He drew his pistol and rolled over onto his back to aim up at the balcony and fire at any attackers, but Kalana shook her head and grabbed his hands, pulling his weapon down. Unable to be heard due to the earplugs, she drew words in the sand with her finger.

"No gunners at the turret means no hands to unlock the door. I used my bomb to blow open the door. We'll steal another from the armory on the way up."

Relief washed over Mewtwo as he read it. He gave Kalana a nod and she returned it before giving him the "Follow me" gesture again. She began to climb up the tower ahead of him; once she was clear Mewtwo equipped the set of metal gauntlets she had given him. They were the wrong shape for his hands so he couldn't wear them, but he could at least hold onto the leather palms and use them as pads to climb the spikes without the sharp metal cutting his hands. This left his feet unprotected though unfortunately, so he had to try his best to support most of his weight with his arms so his feet wouldn't get cut too badly.

This proved far more difficult than Mewtwo had expected. His legs and tail were the most muscular parts of him while his arms were easily the least. By the time he had climbed to the second spike the gauntlets that he was holding ended up sliding across the metal and forcing him to rest his weight on one of the jagged spikes with his left foot. Fortunately for him the inner surface of the spike wasn't as sharp as the point so the metal didn't cut too deeply, but the pain was enough to make him cry out and scramble more to get his weight back off his foot. He struggled like this multiple times, taking several minutes longer than expected, but once he got near the top Kalana took hold of him and hauled him over the ledge. He sat down on the metal balcony floor and showed her the bleeding gashes on his feet, which drew a guilty gasp and a regretful look. Kalana dug some red potion out of her bag and offered it to Mewtwo, who greedily drank it down and waited for it to seal up his wounds. Thankfully the potion seemed to work far more quickly on superficial flesh wounds than it did on broken bones, so the gashes were completely gone in less than a minute.

Once Mewtwo was good to go he gestured to Kalana to lead the way. She nodded and took him through the smoldering remains of the sliding steel door, which led into an eerily dark metal passage lit only by blood red lights recessed in the ceiling. There were a few closed side-doors that they passed as they walked, each one having red holographic keypads next to them for entry. Kalana moved quickly in the dim light, confident in her knowledge of the passages. They went directly in, not making any deviations or turns, and not a single soul showed up to oppose them. The inner door that opened to the tower's central shaft opened for them automatically and Kalana drew her gun and swept it around the room, searching for targets. Mewtwo grabbed his pistol and joined her, but the place seemed completely abandoned.

The huge cylindrical chamber stretched up above them for hundreds upon hundreds of feet. Mewtwo could see the railed-off platforms above them, having dozens of floors that they could visit. There were turrets placed in multiple spots, but every single one was abandoned. The room had bright bloody red lighting cast down the central shaft from the top, and this light made the flowing water on the dozens of pipes and conduits in the center of the shaft look like blood. The lighting and architecture gave the whole place an utterly oppressive and horrifying atmosphere which Mewtwo figured appropriate for an empire of murderous slave-drivers. As he waited for Kalana to finish scanning the room for threats Mewtwo began to realize the deeply unsettling implications of the tower's technology. Whoever the Sulaaq really were, they were advanced beyond anything Mewtwo had ever seen. Even if the Gerudos were smart enough to use their weapons, it was clear the Sulaaq could easily have exterminated them all with this kind of technology if they had really wanted. So why hadn't they? The thought of leaving this realm and abandoning Kalana and her people to the whims of this brutal technological power was starting to stir Mewtwo's conscience, but before he could ponder it in more detail Kalana turned and gave Mewtwo a very concerned look, then gestured to him to follow before taking off toward the Northern side of the room as planned.

Mewtwo ran after her and took this chance to look around and absorb his surroundings, intending to learn the layout in case something went wrong. The circular platform that composed this floor was roughly donut shaped and there was black steel railing around the hole in the center. There were four turrets mounted on this railing and facing inward and downward, as if in preparation to fire on intruders on the ground floor. The turrets were similar to the weapons that Kalana had stolen, but were much larger and mounted to swiveling turret bases attached to the rails. They were also hooked up to huge, thick cables that were anchored to the floor. There were four sets of large sliding steel doors in the outer walls of the room, one at each of the four cardinal directions. Scattered about between them were a few smaller doors and some grated ventilation ducts. All were shut and had similar holographic control panels next to them. The walls were mostly the same burnished black steel, but Mewtwo could see some piping and conduits between plating, as well as what looked like small maintenance hatches with locked lids. The red lighting made it impossible for him to make out any other details more intricate than this. As they passed the railed off vertical shaft he cast a glance upward and noticed that the vertical columns of conduits in the center were glowing brightly with red light and occasionally crackled with arcs of electric red plasma. There was a strange chill on the air here that seemed to radiate from that central column, implying that it was intensely cold. Water was running down the surfaces of the pipes and conduits in rivulets; down here it was fairly thick and fast but as he looked up he could see that it wasn't quite as copious along the upper sections. Some conduits were cold enough that the condensation froze into thick frost, and it seemed like these spots were forming and melting randomly all over the conduit tower due to temperature fluctuation. Down below, at the base of the column, was a pool of water shaped like a ring where all this condensation was collecting. He couldn't get a closer look though, since they passed out of view on their way to the north wall. 

Here Mewtwo could see sliding doors for what he assumed to be an elevator, judging by the console next to it having rows of numbered buttons. Just as they approached Mewtwo did a double take when he realized that these were readable numbers that he could understand, the same as humans used on Earth! It struck him again how odd it was that Kalana had even been able to communicate with him at all, those buttons were a reminder. Maybe this was proof that parallel dimensions really did have a lot of similarities with each other? Either way Kalana skipped right past the elevator and stopped at the door next to it that was supposed to lead to the stairwell. It didn't slide open automatically like the door that had opened into this big circular chamber, a fact that seemed to take Kalana by surprise.

Unable to speak to Mewtwo due to the earplugs they were wearing Kalana turned and gave him an extremely worried look. She hovered her hand over the console next to the door and shook her head, implying that they were again stymied by a lack of a thrall's hand print to unlock the door. Mewtwo nodded a little to indicate that he understood, and then he stepped over to the elevator and tried tapping the button for the top floor. Amazingly, the elevator door slid open for them automatically. Kalana gawked at this, balked, then backed up a few steps as if instinctively terrified. She raised her hands and gave a "No way" gesture, shaking her head rapidly. Mewtwo had no idea of any other path they could take, so he raised his arms and shrugged his shoulders to show her he was confused. She responded by using her hands to mime climbing a ladder, then pointed at the central conduit shaft. This caused Mewtwo to shudder, he didn't have a fear of heights but he certainly wasn't confident in his ability to climb that huge distance with his weak, atrophied arms. Especially when it was wet and slippery and freezing cold. He gave her the "No Way" gesture right back and tried to mime losing his grip on a ladder and falling.

Kalana now looked exasperated, she scanned the room again to make sure no thralls had wandered into the room and witnessed their wordless argument. Once satisfied that they were still alone, she pointed at the elevator and made the "Danger" and "Trap" gestures. Mewtwo decided to trust her judgment here since she had more experience with the security measures in the tower than he did. Out of any other ideas he decided to walk over to one of the nearby vents and pry it open with his scimitar. The screw holding the grating screeched as it gave way, then the frame popped open and revealed the pitch blackness inside the air vent. Mewtwo crouched down as if trying to climb inside, but he was stymied by the fact that the interior was actually far smaller than he had anticipated. Too many hokey human books and films had led him to think that air venting could be big enough for an intruder to crawl around inside when infiltrating some sort of hostile facility. The opening of the vent had been deceptively large, but the actual duct inside rapidly narrowed down to a width so tiny that only a little kid could fit inside. Kalana came up and grabbed his shoulder at this point to gently pull him back, then gave him the "No Way" signal again before miming a tiny little square to make her point.

Mewtwo heaved a defeated sigh, he knew there was no way he was going to be able to climb that watery conduit tower. He gave Kalana a dejected look of resignation as he stood back up. She returned that look and shook her head. Then, her face lit up with realization as if an idea had come to her. She grabbed his shoulder and took him over toward the railed gap in the center of the room. Once there she grabbed the two-stick handles of the gun turret and swiveled it around to face toward the door, then gave Mewtwo the "Back off" gesture. A huge grin spread across Mewtwo's face as he realized what she was about to do, and then he took several big steps away to let her work her magic. She flipped a switch on the body of the huge gun and then a set of four glowing red crystals popped out along the top in a line. The crystals began to glow brighter and brighter in sequence, and when Kalana pulled the trigger on the handles it fired a blindingly bright continuous beam of red light that struck the door and began to melt right through the metal! Mewtwo could feel the air heating up searing hot from the beam and some wind began to kick up from the convection disturbance it caused. Smoke billowed out of the metal wall around the door as well as showers of electrical sparks. Mewtwo could also hear a deep electrical thrumming through the ear plugs; it was so intense he could feel it vibrating his innards. Kalana swept the beam in a neat arch-shaped arc all around the door fairly quickly, sending white-hot bursts of bubbling molten metal flowing and showering to the floor. When the beam connected with some sort of power conduit in the wall by the console that controlled the door it violently exploded, sending the door careening sideways through the air with a cacophonous clanging boom!

Kalana let go of the triggers and immediately rotated the turret on its base again, sweeping the room and then checking the upper floors to see if the explosion had attracted any attention. Mewtwo took the time to watch the door they had blown for any hostiles too, gun grip feeling hot in his sweaty palm. Nobody emerged out of the dissipating clouds of smoke though; neither did anyone appear on the upper floors to draw Kalana's fire. The building tension in the air was beginning to rattle Mewtwo's nerves and make him jumpy. Where the hell was everybody? If this place was abandoned by the Sulaaq, why was the power still on? He glanced over at Kalana with an uncertain, jittery look.

Kalana jumped down from the gun emplacement then ran over to Mewtwo. She pointed at the hot molten metal on the floor around the door and gave him a warning gesture to make sure he didn't step in any of it, then she sprinted up the stairs. Still worried that this all might be one big elaborate trap by the Sulaaq, Mewtwo hesitated for a brief moment before running after her. 

The stairwell was narrow and claustrophobic, only having room for one of them to pass at a time. Mewtwo caught up to Kalana quickly, but things slowed down fairly rapidly as Kalana had to pause and check her corners at every single landing to make sure they weren't taken by surprise by a foe waiting in ambush. The stairwell had tons of blind corners that a thrall could hide in, and it would only take one of them shooting either of them in the head to put an end to this entire journey. Mewtwo lost count of how many floors they climbed and his legs began to cramp and ache again as they went, slowing him down even more. They eventually stopped and passed into another hallway, then hung a quick left turn instead of going into the main central shaft. They came to a stop in front of another locked door. Kalana planted her face on her palm and then pointed at the console next to the door. Again they had no thrall's palm to unlock it, but this time there was no massive turret nearby to blast the door open. Mewtwo decided to draw his pistol and aim it at the palm reader mechanism, hoping that he could blow the lock out, but Kalana grabbed his wrists and pulled the gun away, then gave a "No Way" gesture. 

Kalana followed up by giving a "Wait" gesture, then began to pace and think. Mewtwo put away his weapon and leaned against the wall next to the door, trying to wrack his brain for solutions. He was only a few thoughts in when something strange distracted him. A familiar mental fog descended on his brain, filled with flickering unclear images. He knew this feeling, he had felt it before when trying to use his psychic powers to read the future. Sometimes it happened on its own accord too, but this was extremely rare and had never produced anything accurate or useful. When it did happen on its own, it only seemed to happen when he was half asleep, either falling asleep or emerging from it. He'd never had it happen when he was wide awake and pumped full of adrenaline before! Moreover he couldn't exactly understand how it was even possible when his psychic powers were totally tapped out by the damn drain device in this tower. He wanted to try to focus on how this could be possible but the flickering vision grew and grew until it dominated his mind and clouded everything out.

He saw himself and Kalana standing at the top of the tower, attaching what looked like plastic explosives to a glowing, complex machine. He saw them retreat backwards to another room, then Kalana pressed a button on a small remote detonator. But instead of just blowing the device, his view zoomed back and he saw the entire tower go up in a massive blast almost like a small nuclear detonation! The massive mushroom cloud glowed red and emitted crackling bolts of red lightning as it rapidly expanded, dwarfing the size of the tower that had produced it. Hardly anything was left, he certainly couldn't see any remains of himself or Kalana left afterward; they must have been vaporized! The message seemed to be a very clear warning that they were about to bumble into their own certain death, but the vision wasn't finished yet. It rewound backwards, and he saw himself stopping and taking the bombs off of the tower. He saw himself gesture to Kalana to wait, then he opened up a control console on the device. The vision didn't show the console clearly enough to read, but eventually he saw himself pull Kalana aside to the same room for cover, and then the device shot off a massive beam of red light straight up through a hole in the roof! The beam was blindingly bright and massive, and the discharge seemed to cause the sensitive machinery to melt down and destroy itself! The vision began to fade away rapidly at that point, returning him to reality with an intense feeling of nausea and discomfort. 

Disoriented by the shifting of his perception and the feelings of nausea, Mewtwo began to slide sideways and nearly slid off the wall. He reached up to catch himself and stop the fall successfully, but his palm landed on the palm scanner in the process by accident. Then, reacting to the touch, the console flashed green and made a chirping sound that Mewtwo could barely hear through the earplugs. Kalana turned to look and her jaw dropped with utter shock when she saw the panel light up and the doors slide right open to give them access to the armory! Kalana suddenly grabbed her rifle and slung it off of her back, aiming it at Mewtwo with a look of angry suspicion on her face. She gestured at his hand on the door and shouted something at him, forgetting the earplugs briefly in her surge of fear.

Mewtwo was still a little out of whack from his vision but he understood why Kalana was scared. Hell, he was starting to feel dread oozing up higher and higher in his stomach as the implications settled in. If the door opened for him, was he related to the Sulaaq somehow? He remembered Kalana and the Chief mentioning that sometimes the Sulaaq looked like him too, what if the Sulaaq had involvement with some other dimension's alternate version of himself? Either way he yanked his hands away from the wall, dropped his pistol, and put both hands up in the air to try and show Kalana that he meant no harm. He briefly gestured to his ears with one hand to remind her of the earplugs and she scowled and then lifted one hand to make a gesture at him. "Come here."

Mewtwo slowly walked up to her with his hands still in the air and she lowered the rifle, produced some ropes from her bag of supplies, and roughly tied his hands behind his back. She yanked the other weapons off his person and kicked them away, then grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand and put the rifle into his back and began to push him through the open door into the armory. Mewtwo wished he could speak to her and reassure her that he wasn't a Sulaaq and that he had no idea why their locks would open for him, but as they entered something else interrupted his train of thought. There were rows upon rows of shelving and racks for weapons, and every single one of them was absolutely barren. 

Kalana again gawked in shock, then briefly turned away from Mewtwo and began to slam open cabinets to search for anything they could use. There were no rifles, no pistols, no battery packs, no bombs or grenades or anything. The place was completely looted down to every last scrap, not even a strap or holster had been left. The door swished shut behind them at that point, a fact that Kalana noticed and immediately took advantage of. She stowed her rifle, drew her pistol, and turned to fire it at two tiny little speakers in the corners of the ceiling of the room. She checked around, leaving Mewtwo tied but standing, and then when she was sure it was safe she slowly and cautiously started to pull one earplug out. After sloooowly checking for the vague sound of the voice of the incantation, she then yanked them all the way out and turned to pull Mewtwo's out too. She brusquely shoved him down onto his knees and began to interrogate him.

"Start explaining!" She said in a chilling, angry tone.

"I can't explain, I don't know why these would open for me, I swear to you!" Mewtwo replied emphatically.

"Bullshit you don't know! Listen, I trusted you Mewtwo! I bore my heart out to you, stuck my neck out in front of my mother, and threw away everything to make sure you're safe! If there is ANYTHING that you need to say to me now, I need you to say it! If you were a Sulaaq and decided to betray them that's fine, but you have to tell me! At least give me some small reason to believe you won't brainwash me with magic once that drain device turns off!" Kalana said, a measure of sadness and desperation coming through in her tone.

"I...I don't have anything. Everything I told you back in Ven'rakesh is true Kalana, I'm from another world and I have no knowledge at all about the Sulaaq. I don't know why they would have my hand print on file, and I don't have any way to prove it to you." Mewtwo paused and looked down at the floor sadly. "I won't blame you if you want to leave me here and just go home to Ven'rakesh. You don't need to be here when I blow the drain device. If you're worried that I might psychically attack you, then just turn and go now. I'll get my hands free eventually and take care of myself after you're gone."

A long, strained silence hung on the air after Mewtwo finished speaking. Kalana stared at him intensely then grunted in dismay. She waved her pistol upwards and then finally said "Here, look me in the eye when you speak. Look right into my eyes so I can tell if you're a liar."

Mewtwo raised his head and locked eyes with her. His stomach was sick with dread and uncertainty, but he knew he was telling the truth. "I promise I mean you no harm. I promise it with all the conviction I can muster, even if it doesn't mean much coming from a murderous monster like me."

Kalana's steely gaze bore into Mewtwo's soul for several seconds as silence returned to the air between them. For a brief moment Mewtwo could see the same dark, stern suspicion of the Chief in Kalana's eyes as she tried to scour him for any signs of deceit. Eventually she heaved a sigh and shook her head.

"Sa'oten. I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm such a Kiharé." Kalana muttered, then walked up and cut the bindings off of Mewtwo.

"Thank you. This means more to me than you can imagine. But what does Kiharé mean?" Mewtwo asked, rubbing his arms as he stood back up.

"It means 'Reckless Idiot' in the Gerudo tongue, though I'm sure mother would have far more colorful language if she saw me doing this now." Kalana spat, then leaned down to pick up their discarded earplugs.

"Well we'll both be Kiharés then, because I don't plan to stop."

"It's pointless idiocy anyway, they took all the bombs. We don't have any explosives left to blow the device with, we're screwed. I undid your bindings because I know you're going to be stuck here even if I do leave you alone, we have to come up with another plan." Kalana replied as she handed Mewtwo back his earplugs.

"I have a hunch. If somehow my hand print will work on doors, maybe it will work on other devices in this place. Maybe I can shut the machine down with my hand print, or set it to destroy itself. We won't know unless we go up there and try it." Mewtwo replied, neglecting to mention his vision.

"Ugh, that's wishful thinking on a scale even worse than anything else we've tried so far."

"Do you have any other ideas? We could always try ripping out one of those emplaced turrets with raw strength and lugging it up the stairs to blast the device with." Mewtwo replied.

"Ugh, alright, come on and we'll try your method first. But let's not dawdle anymore, we're wasting daylight and the Sulaaq could still show up at any second."

Kalana began to put her earplugs back in, but Mewtwo interjected once more before she could finish. "Where the hell do you think they are anyway?"

"I have no Goddesses-damned idea."

** Chapter 6: Chosen **

Kalana peered around the corner and into the chamber before the magic-draining device and furrowed her brows. She only looked for a second, darting back around almost as if expecting a hail of laser fire to come roaring through the archway after her. Nothing happened though, and soon both she and Mewtwo were poking their heads around to look.

The room beyond was clearly a hardened military strong point designed to hold back intruders. It was circular and evenly bisected by a chest-high steel barrier adorned with wicked spikes. The surface of the barrier was polished to a reflective mirror shine, but pockmarked with scars and dents. There were multiple huge turrets placed on the wall, as well as reflective one-way plexiglass barriers atop the wall to protect the defenders from incoming fire. The whole place was just as abandoned as the rest of the tower though, a fact that only intensified the pit of dread in Mewtwo's stomach. Kalana grabbed a small rock from her pack and tossed it through the archway into the chamber to test and see if anything reacted, but again nothing happened. With a "Follow me!" hand signal she then sprinted around the corner, crossed the room with a huge burst of speed, and then vaulted over the barrier at one of the clear spots where there wasn't a shield on top. Mewtwo followed along quickly, springing over the barrier and landing with an awkward thud. There was a door in the wall here, also locked like the others, but Mewtwo quickly walked over to it and pressed his palm on the console next to the door. The red glowing holographic panel turned green and the door swooshed open effortlessly once again.

The room beyond was just like what Mewtwo had seen in his vision, but the vision had been cloudy in its periphery and hadn't shown the details of the chamber itself. The room was suspended atop the huge vertical shaft that ran up the tower and the floor was a solid transparent glass, letting them see all the way down to the bottom hundreds of feet below. The center of the room was dominated by a massive black steel machine covered in innumerable hundreds of conduits, wires, pipes, and cables of various sizes. Mewtwo could see that the massive conduit column that had dominated the center of the tower's hollow interior was connected directly to the bottom of this huge machine. Above, six massive cables were attached to the top and reached up and outward to connect with the roof of the room, almost like six spokes on a wheel. There was a huge hole in the roof too, just above the machine itself, and fading orange-red sunlight was coming in at an angle along with hot dry desert winds. Despite this source of outside air the atmosphere of the room was close, oppressive, and seemed to be electrically charged with palpable energy. Mewtwo could see the red arcs of plasma along the conduit column below them through the glass floor, seemingly explaining why the air had a distinct taste of ozone in here. Mewtwo also had a horrible sinking feeling of something watching him despite the lack of Sulaaq or visible cameras in the room with them.

Kalana put a hand on Mewtwo's shoulder to shake him out of his thoughts. She gestured at the huge machine with her other hand and then shrugged her shoulders in confusion. Mewtwo turned to look at her and gave her his best look of confidence, then strolled across the glass floor and approached the machine. There was one small red holographic console on it, waiting for a hand print. He placed his hand there and it flashed green, then expanded to a massive, table-sized control panel several feet tall and wide. The whole thing lit up with Japanese text which Mewtwo could easily read. He silently whispered thanks to the cosmos for the fact that he had been born in Japan and began to read the display carefully. Kalana watched in amazement as he stood quietly and ran over the text with his fingertips while reading. Most of it was technological jargon that he couldn't really understand. There was a bar graph for Capacitor Grid charge over time, a line chart showing fluctuation in "Containment Field Stability", a table of numerical data values for some sort of energy absorption spectrum, and several terms that even he couldn't understand. Sure Mewtwo had read the minds of the scientists who had created him and learned a tremendous amount about technology that way, but those scientists had been biologists and geneticists, and they certainly weren't as advanced as the Sulaaq engineers that had built this. Mewtwo fiddled around until he found a scroll bar, then used it to navigate around until he came across a large series of buttons to issue commands. Again, most of these were beyond his understanding and sounded like bullshit from a sci-fi TV show humans had written, but he immediately knew he had found what he was looking for when he laid eyes on a big, red, grayed-out button surrounded by blinking Caution symbols. It was clearly labeled "Emergency Capacitor Vent!" and it had further warning text underneath it: "WARNING: Capacitors are currently at 75% charge! Emergency Venting above the 50% threshold will cause catastrophic power overload and total system failure! Do not use except to stop explosive capacitor chain reactions!" Beneath that text was a button labeled "Override Safeties."

Mewtwo gleefully slammed his palm on the override button, which made the formerly grayed-out Vent button enable itself and start flashing red. Mewtwo quickly pressed this one next and it prompted him one more time with a window that said "Confirm Emergency Vent!" Without hesitation he confirmed it and then grabbed Kalana to yank her away to safety. They ran together through the door and back into the hardened checkpoint, then took shelter behind the spiked security barrier. A huge, roaring boom sounded not long after they made it to safety and the intensity of it easily penetrated the earplugs and rattled Mewtwo's entire body. The floor shook violently and blinding red light poured out of the door frame and bathed the whole room in its sickly bloody glow. The blast only lasted a few seconds though, and in its aftermath the lights recessed in the ceiling all shut down at once, plunging the two of them into near-total darkness. Now the only light they had to go by was a hint of indirect sunlight that emanated through the doorway from the drain device's room, where the hole in the ceiling was letting the fading dusk in. Mewtwo grinned and pulled his earplugs out rapidly, then said "There! I thought that would work!"

Kalana produced a flare and struck it, sending a column of intense white flames and sparks straight up to illuminate them and the room around them. She pulled her earplugs out and scowled. "So not only do you have a palm print that opens Sulaaq doors, but you know how to operate their machines too?"

The smile faded from Mewtwo's face and he turned to address her, holding his arms out in the air. "Look, I can feel my powers coming back, but I'm not attacking you, see? If I was a Sulaaq then wouldn't I attack you now?"

Kalana shook her head and waved her hands in the air dismissively. "Alright, alright. I believe you. At least you can go home now, right?"

Mewtwo paused and assessed the situation. His energy was surging back to full force, it was almost like he had been resting for a whole day and was now totally fresh. He could easily go home now if he wanted, assuming the vortex in the interdimensional space wasn't still there. But then something struck him as he pondered leaving now. He looked at Kalana standing there in her ragged patchwork leather cloak, body covered in battle scars and wielding weapons she only casually understood how to use. This was a woman who really had risked everything and willingly given up so much to help him, and now when they had finally accomplished what they had set out to do, Mewtwo's conscience woke up and told him that he couldn't just leave her. He couldn't leave any of these people here to die their slow, drawn-out deaths of starvation and enslavement under the heels of the Sulaaq. If he could shatter the drain device on this tower then it meant he could shatter the other ones too. With his powers he could put an end to the enslavement of the people of Hypalia. For once in his miserable life he could do something good for someone and make a real difference, rather than sulking sadly about his nature. He looked over the barrier into the drain device chamber, then back to Kalana.

"Not yet. If I'm going to leave, at the very least I need to do something for you and your people now that I have access to my powers for a time. Before I do anything though, answer me just a few questions. The thralls that the Sulaaq keep, they are mostly Gerudos now, yes?"

Kalana shot Mewtwo a worried and confused look before she replied. "Yes, us and Gorons, since we are the only long-lived peoples of Hypalia and the Sulaaq don't let their thralls bear children. What exactly are you playing at? You mean to free a bunch of them?"

"In a word, yes. Tell me another thing, how long does it take for them on average to bring reinforcements in to repair the drain device after one of your raids?"

"The device takes 3 or 4 days to rebuild, but the actual reinforcements typically arrive in an hour or less. Which is usually why dawdling like this isn't such a good idea!" Kalana replied in an uncomfortable tone.

"And what direction do these reinforcements usually come from?" Mewtwo asked as a plan began to solidify in his head.

"Mewtwo, please, I am grateful to you for your desire to help us, but you're underestimating the threat they can pose in battle!"

Those words caused Mewtwo's bruised and battered ego to start surging up to the surface. It was eager to reassert itself after being so browbeaten into involuntary humility by the events of the last 24 hours. He felt that a show of his power was in order, so he raised his hands and began to speak telepathically. 

"You've never seen my abilities in action Kalana. Watch this. I'll make sure the Sulaaq don't rebuild this device in just 3 or 4 days!"

A brilliant aura of glowing blue psychic power flared around Mewtwo as he reached out with his telekinesis and began to shear the very walls of the tower apart around them. Focusing just on this upper floor, he systematically ripped the bulkheads and wall panels to pieces, creating a shrieking cacophony of ripping metal. Kalana ducked as cords and cables snapped like whips and chunks of the structure pulled free all around them. These huge fractured pieces were then subsequently released into the air outside the tower to plummet to the sands below. The now heavily damaged drain device emitted showers of shards and shrapnel as Mewtwo pointed his hands at it and rent it into pieces with his mind. Thankfully the razor sharp shards were easily directed away from him and Kalana with telekinetic force. Kalana gawked in amazement and terror as Mewtwo put on an extra special show of disassembling the drain device into tens of thousands of tiny pieces right before her eyes. He then waved his hands dismissively as if brushing all the debris aside, causing the shards to rocket off into the distance at colossal speed. Now they were standing exposed on a platform of flooring with no walls around them, bathed in gorgeous reddish-purple light from the setting sun. 

"Sa'oten!" Kalana exclaimed softly.

Mewtwo smiled smugly. "Whatever they send, I will handle. To prove to you that I mean to help you, I'll do it without killing a single Thrall. I'll save them all and free every last one of them. I just need to know where they usually come from. If I remember correctly, you had mentioned tunnels underneath the towers, correct?"

"Y-Yes, there's subway tunnels connecting every single tower together in a vast underground network. Undoubtedly they will have sent a train out by now." Kalana replied, still looking shocked by Mewtwo's display.

"Good, then we will go down to the station in the basement and have a stakeout until they arrive. Once they start coming off the train I'll ambush them, disable all their sources of incantation, and free them. And if we're lucky, your sister will be among them."

* * *

The interior of the tower was absolutely pitch black due to the power outage that Mewtwo had caused. This necessitated him creating a psychic orb of light as he led Kalana down the stairs from the top all the way to the basement. The narrow steps would have been a death trap in the absolute blackness, especially if they blundered into Sulaaq reinforcements on the way down. Despite the fact that Mewtwo had all his abilities back now and could easily defend himself, the horrible oppressive atmosphere of the place remained. Mewtwo's returning ego and self-confidence just couldn't break the aura of terrible dread about this place, even if he believed himself fully capable of defeating the people who had built it.

Once they got to the bottom floor Mewtwo had to telekineticly rip the unpowered door open in order to gain access. This revealed a huge room that basically looked like an industrial loading bay built around a monorail track that was recessed into the ground and connected to two huge tunnel openings in the left and right walls. There were a few active lights in this room; all of them were located on the rail and the floor around it, but the main ceiling lights were all still dead. This seemed to imply that the rail itself was an energy conduit, which would make sense given that train cars were expected to arrive regardless of the state of the tower's own power grid. Mewtwo could see a closed freight elevator built into the wall immediately to the left of him and several huge, hastily-stacked black steel crates scattered around the room. There was plenty of filth and scuffing all over the dark steel floor, giving plenty of indication of all the heavy loading activity that had undoubtedly taken place here. Most of the crates looked empty, having their lids hanging open or loosely draped alongside them, but some still appeared closed. There weren't any actual remaining forklifts or other machines, so aside from the crates the room seemed barren. Kalana gestured to the crates and dashed over to hide behind a stack of them. Mewtwo followed her quickly, feeling grateful for the fact that the stack gave them an excellent hiding place out of view of anyone unloading from the subway.

"The train itself will have its own incantation broadcasters so we'll need to put in our earplugs again immediately. Before we do though, there is something else I should tell you about." Kalana whispered. Her tone seemed hesitant and almost guilty.

"Go ahead."

"Well, the Sulaaq aren't just thralls, there are ruling castes above them that I haven't yet described. You probably heard my mother mention them earlier today, but I probably should have given you more detail before we got here. Even if thralls are the only thing we've ever seen in living memory, the old scrolls also described the Sulaaq themselves as being divided into two distinct groups: The Immortals and The Chosen. Thankfully, the Immortals are, as far as we know, not actually immortal. It's a name that our ancestors gave to them because they all seem to be perfectly identical monstrosities that shared so much in common with each other that it was impossible to even tell them apart. It was supposed that even if you killed one in battle, you couldn't tell the next one apart from it, so it was almost as if you hadn't killed them at all but they had just come back to life. They were terrifyingly savage warriors that wore massive suits of mechanical armor and fought using razor sharp claws built into their gauntlets. They were incredibly magically talented, but often didn't use their magic in favor of simply disemboweling their foes with their blades and devouring the remains."

"Chilling." Mewtwo replied, frowning as he tried to imagine one. "What do they look like, and what are they capable of?"

"Unfortunately their appearances were never actually seen in much detail due to the armor they wore. But the details we have describe them as standing on two legs, having a long tail, two arms, and standing nearly 7 feet tall. Their armor was said to be physically attached to them and impossible to remove, and it was rumored to be completely impenetrable to even the most powerful Hypalian weapons. Only magic could harm them, and if you did manage to cause damage to them this way they would simply cast a magical barrier that would block all future attempts. Legends say that our ancestors only ever managed to kill a scant few of them before their conquest was rapidly completed. They were bloodthirsty monsters who never spoke, never had names, couldn't read or write, and seemed feral in their violent blood lust. They only answered to the Chosen caste, who were the leaders of the Sulaaq."

"And what about them, what were they like?"

"They...well they were the ones we described as the shape-shifters. They were only seen once or twice by our ancestors during the Sulaaq Conquest and very few survived to tell the tale. It was never certain whether the forms that were witnessed were their true forms since they could change shape at a whim. They are the reason my mother was suspicious of you, since they weren't mute like their Immortal servants. They were even more powerful mages than the Immortals, and were said to be unparalleled in their sadism and cruelty." Kalana whispered.

Mewtwo fidgeted nervously with the earplugs in his hands as he listened to Kalana's description. Self-doubt began to curl around inside his guts as he pondered what a "Powerful mage" could even do. What if the Chosen could match his psychic power with their spells? Was it even likely that one might show up today at all? He began to ask Kalana a question but then his ears suddenly caught a hint of an unintelligible distant female voice. Kalana apparently heard it too, because she instantly began scrambling to stuff her earplugs in.

"Earplugs, NOW!" Kalana urged.

Mewtwo's blood began to turn icy as he rapidly jammed the waxy fabric into his ears and snuffed out his psychic light orb. He tucked his tail behind himself and crouched down low behind the crates as he instinctively raised a psychic cloaking field around himself and Kalana. A minute or so later the room was illuminated again, but this time by the same sickly blood red light that the Sulaaq seemed so fond of. Mewtwo couldn't hear a peep through the plugs but he could see the red light source moving into the room from one of the tunnels in the far wall. It stopped in the center of the room, casting eerie shadows of the crates against the walls. Mewtwo watched those shadows cautiously as silhouettes of humanoid people began to appear a few moments later. He knew that he could pop out of cover using his cloak anytime he liked without being seen, but the sinking feeling of dread in this place was intensifying rapidly and causing him to remain pinned in a crouched position. Something felt horrifyingly wrong now; his feline instincts were screaming in his head to get out of that place as fast as he possibly could. Only his determination to save the thralls kept him there.

The minutes passed in debilitatingly tense silence as Mewtwo and Kalana waited for the Thralls to make a move. They seemed to be milling about and unloading gear on the other side of the crate pile just out of sight. Mewtwo couldn't shake the feeling that was keeping him from acting, even though he had planned to spring out and disable the incantation the moment the train stopped. It was only when he actually spotted the Thralls walking into view that he was finally roused to action. Several older and emaciated Gerudo women with blank, pupil-less eyes marched across the room toward the freight elevator in a robotic manner, each carrying one of those black metal rifles like the one Kalana had stolen and used. They still wore their traditional Gerudo clothes, but these clothes were now dirty and ragged with wear and tear. Mewtwo noticed that only a few of them wore red like the ones from Ven'rakesh, most wore a mixture of blue, green, or yellow outfits. Most seemed to be visibly old and craggy and a huge majority had horrible scars or barely-healed wounds. A few were pulling on the handles of heavily loaded freight dollies that seemed to be hovering on glowing cushions of red energy rather than wheels. The thralls stopped at the freight elevator and tried to summon it, but since the tower's power was out they were seemingly stuck. Mewtwo also spotted an extremely bizarre two-legged creature among them that seemed to resemble a walking, animated brown stone boulder with arms, legs, and a head. This creature also had a face with blank soulless eyes and was carrying a crate with his bare hands as if unperturbed by the obvious weight of it. 

Mewtwo finally sprung up out of hiding, sending a telepathic message to Kalana to wait in their hiding place. He floated out into the center of the room and saw the massive cargo cars on the train that had stopped in the center of the room. Huge sliding doors had opened on the sides of each car, showing dozens more crates of supplies that more of the stone-skinned beings were lifting out and loading onto hover-dollies. The train itself was just as sleek and high-tech as everything else, but unfortunately Mewtwo couldn't seem to spot any visible external speakers on it. Where the hell was the incantation coming from? He pondered just waiting for the Thralls to finish unloading themselves from the train and then blasting the whole thing apart with a psychic blast, but his thoughts were interrupted when he suddenly heard a sinister telepathic voice speaking directly to him.

"Don't think I don't sense you."

All of a sudden Mewtwo's psychic senses detected the presence of another psychic being on that train that hadn't been there before. Only a moment after that did he see a hauntingly familiar form step out of a door on the train and into plain view. Mewtwo's jaw dropped agape in horror as he beheld the sharp, orange-suited form of his former foe Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket!

"YOU!" Mewtwo bellowed out telepathically.

"What's the matter Mewtwo, surprised to see me here? Drop that foolish cloak, I know right where you are."

Mewtwo dropped his cloak, not out of any desire to obey the wretched man in front of him, but to conserve psychic energy now that he knew it was useless to hide. He instinctively charged and fired a shadow ball at his old foe, which sailed through the air and homed directly in on his form. With supernatural reflexes Giovanni ducked the attack and rushed several steps forward, avoiding the blast that ensued as the shadow ball struck the subway car and violently detonated it.

The Incantation must have ended when the subway car detonated, as the thralls suddenly dropped what they were doing and began to look around in confusion. Mewtwo took this time to rip the earplugs out of his ears. He was about to bellow angrily at Giovanni, but the orange-suited gangster beat him to the punch.

"Oh bother, you're really just as stubborn as ever aren't you? Now I have to do this." Giovanni said, then raised one hand that began to glow red.

Suddenly all the Thralls went rigid again, as if direct control of their minds had resumed. Mewtwo recoiled again in horror as he tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. Giovanni had never displayed any sort of psychic capabilities before and the idea of what he might do with them was frankly nightmarish. Despite the restored mind control the thralls seemed to ignore Mewtwo for now, thankfully. They went back to their work again and were starting to set crates down next to the freight elevator. Mewtwo decided that he didn't want to wait for Giovanni to make a move though, it was time to do what he should have done to him right from the beginning. Mewtwo focused a massive surge of psychic power into a direct telepathic blast, aiming to cook the vile man's brain inside of his head. No more giving him a chance to attack. No more reckless banter that would allow him to deploy more machines. No more mercy. Unfortunately, even that direct pragmatism seemed to fail; the Psychic attack bounced harmlessly off of his opponent like water splattering on concrete. 

"What's wrong Mewtwo, can't handle the thought that I might actually have prepared the technology to follow you to this world and handle you properly this time?" Giovanni taunted, contemptuously ignoring the lethal attack that he had just shrugged off. 

Mewtwo's heart sank into despair and horror for a few brief moments before he remembered the fact that Kalana had described the Sulaaq Chosen as shape shifters who loved to take the form of what people feared most. It all made sense, Mewtwo had been reckless and didn't have a mental barrier up since he didn't expect psychic foes here, so if this being was a Chosen, and it was the same presence that had registered as a psychic when it arrived, then it would have been easy for it to read Mewtwo's mind and see his fear and hatred of Giovanni.

"I don't believe you, Sulaaq! You're mimicking the demons from my past, I was warned about how you operate!" Mewtwo shouted.

Feeling a renewed surge of confidence Mewtwo raised his psychic shield and hurled a Shadow Ball at the grinning ghoulish facsimile of his old foe. The illusionary Giovanni raised one hand and a psychic barrier of his own appeared, deflecting the orb away harmlessly.

"Oh, is that so? Well I also know how you operate, including all your abilities, so this shouldn't be difficult for me."

Suddenly the form of Giovanni seemed to shimmer and morph before Mewtwo's eyes. The transition almost resembled a TV changing channels too slowly, revealing video distortions and static for a brief moment before the new form showed through. This time his foe took the appearance of an infamous Dark type Pokémon called Zoroark. This particular type of Pokémon was well known for its incredibly potent powers of illusion. Immediately everything seemed to make sense to Mewtwo; most of it seemed to click right into place. Sulaaq were known for shape shifting, so were Zoroarks using illusions. Mewtwo's psychic attacks and cloak had failed to work on his opponent, and Zoroarks were immune to all psionics. Zoroarks could even learn some psychic type powers, though Mewtwo forgot exactly which ones were in their movepool. Moreover, those powers would be entirely indistinguishable from magic, leading to the Gerudos calling them incredibly powerful mages. There were still a few gaps in the theory, but Mewtwo didn't have time to ponder it since the Zoroark was starting to move toward him, brandishing its claws.

Mewtwo acted on instinct now, no longer feeling disconcerted by the trickery. He pulled his hands back to charge an attack, choosing the same old reliable standby that he always employed against Dark types: Aura Sphere. The blue orb of glowing energy coalesced in his hands but the Zoroark seemed completely unphased. Mewtwo didn't care, he lobbed the orb and watched as it homed in directly on its target. But at the last possible second, the Zoroark teleported out of the way and switched places with a young-looking Gerudo thrall. The Aura Sphere didn't have time to course correct and continue homing on its original target; it instead struck the young thrall on her left shoulder and cleanly severed her whole arm, sending her tumbling to the floor in a heap.

"NO!" Mewtwo shouted in horror and shock.

"What's the matter? You actually care about these vermin? That's useful information indeed!" The Zoroark cackled.

Mewtwo didn't have time to react as his opponent raised its arms and began to fire off bolts of crackling red energy that struck more and more of the thralls, blasting horrible burnt holes in their bodies and causing them to collapse. Shock, terror, and complete disgust filled Mewtwo's mind, and for the first time since he had come to the world of Hypalia the red tint of rage began to fill his vision. No longer thinking clearly or remembering his type disadvantage he took off and charged at the Zoroark using telekinetic force to propel himself through the air. He formed a blade of jagged psychic energy in his hands mid-flight with the intent to carve his foe in half.

"Stop it!" He bellowed in rage.

The blade struck the Zoroark in the belly and completely bounced off, dissipating without any sort of effect whatsoever. A jolt of icy fear then surged up Mewtwo's spine as he realized his error. He tried to course-correct by lining up a kick, hoping that some basic fighting-type blows might be more effective. But the Zoroark now had the drop on him; it raised one of its clawed hands and plunged those razor-sharp claws directly through Mewtwo's psychic barrier as if it was made from tissue paper. The blow passed all the way through and landed in Mewtwo's shoulder, carving a deep bleeding wound several inches into his flesh and striking the bone. Mewtwo gasped as his failed kick's momentum caused him to crumple onto the Zoroark's striking arm. The pain broke his focus and caused him to dangle atop that claw while his foe held him aloft with a peal of sinister, derisive laughter.

"I'll give you one single warning, leave this tower and never come back! If you ever interfere with our operations again, I'll carve your head off of your shoulders with my claws!" Zoroark snarled.

"Why...don't you...do that now?" Mewtwo sputtered, reaching up his hands to grab at its arm.

Before the Zoroark could reply though, Mewtwo heard a loud squelch and saw a Scimitar blade plunge directly through its gut! It gasped and began to falter, then snarled furiously and vanished through a teleport. Without the clawed arm holding him up Mewtwo then tumbled to the floor in a crumpled heap, howling in pain. Blood arced out of the open wound now that nothing was wedged in it to keep the flow stemmed. Thankfully Mewtwo was able to quickly use his Recover ability to stanch the bleeding and regenerate his flesh. The hole was still receding when he felt strong hands lift him up into a sitting position. There was Kalana kneeling there next to him with a deadly serious expression on her face and a still-bloody Scimitar in her other hand.

"Are you alright?!" Kalana asked urgently.

"I'll be fine, I'm healing myself with my powers. Did you see the Sulaaq reappear anywhere in the room after it vanished?"

Kalana shook her head, then scanned the room rapidly while Mewtwo climbed to his feet. "Nothing."

Mewtwo heaved a shuddering breath as his shoulder finished healing. As he stumbled to his feet he cast his psychic senses around the area, trying to detect any hint of a presence. Initial looks came up empty, and since Mewtwo didn't think that Zoroarks could learn Recover or any other Pokemon powers that could heal them, he swapped his attention to searching the room for any survivors. The entire group of thralls were collapsed on the floor now, including the huge rocky-skinned ones. He gathered his strength again and began to run around the room, frantically putting his fingers to their necks to check for pulses. Dead. Dead. Dead dead dead. He hadn't moved fast enough, everyone was dead. The Zoroark had killed its entire entourage of slaves, purely to spite Mewtwo. Mewtwo choked back some tears as he continued, refusing to stop until he had checked every single body.

"Mewtwo...it's too late. We should go." Kalana said in a calm but resigned tone.

"No! Not yet! I have to try to save at least one of them! Do you see any still breathing? I won't stop until we know for sure!" Mewtwo shouted back angrily.

"No, it's too dark to see." Kalana replied, then begrudgingly joined him.

Mewtwo continued on through the room with Kalana by his side, checking as many as they could as quickly as they could. He fumbled when they reached the huge stony beings though; their skin was so thick and rocky that he couldn't feel any sort of pulse or warmth through it. He crouched next to one and tried to use Heal Pulse on it, flooding its body with psychic healing energy. The dead flesh didn't respond though; there was no miraculous reanimation to be had when all the life had already gone. Mewtwo began to cry now as he knelt next to the massive stony corpse, choking a little on his sobs as he tried again and again. Kalana knelt next to him and laid a hand on his shoulder comfortingly.

"Mewtwo...I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do. The best thing now would be to give them all proper burials."

"I couldn't even save one of them." Mewtwo sputtered in disgust, finally stopping his failed healing attemps. He fell down onto his hands and knees now and just cried loudly, consumed entirely in shame and grief.

For several horrible moments he was stuck like that, until suddenly he heard one of the thralls moaning in pain. He instantly forgot his shame and jumped to his feet, running over to see that it was one of the last ones he hadn't checked. It was the younger one that his Aura Sphere had struck in the shoulder. Apparently the wound had been non-fatal; the energy of the attack had cauterized it and prevented her from bleeding out. Apparently the Zoroark had taken her for dead and hadn't bothered to fire his much more fatal beams at her. Mewtwo immediately grabbed the girl's severed arm and pressed it back into place, then used Heal Pulse while whispering an aimless prayer to no deity in particular. Relief flooded him when he saw that it wasn't too late, the flesh began to regenerate itself! The arm hadn't gone too long somehow, it knitted itself back to her body under his careful psychic direction. It took a huge amount of power to heal a wound this horrible, especially when it came time to regenerate the bone. It took several minutes, during which Kalana came over to watch. Mewtwo heard her gasping in shock and then starting to cry a little, but he was too busy focusing on healing the injury to stop and look at her.

Once the wound had sealed itself completely, the healing energy flowed out over the rest of the girl's body and washed away all the shock hormones that had knocked her mostly unconscious. She moaned some more, but then opened her eyes and sat up. She looked at Mewtwo and terror flooded her gaze for a moment, but then Kalana gently pushed him aside and scooped her up into her arms and began to hug her tightly while sobbing.

"Kalana?!" The girl asked in shock.

"I thought I lost you, Vála." Kalana managed to say between sobs.

Mewtwo stepped back and let them have their moment. Relief drowned out the guilt and shame he had felt for a brief moment; he knew it was Ruru. He would have to deal with the bodies of the other Thralls soon, but at least he had done what he had set out to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Using this end note box as an aside, I gotta say that now that I'm learning how to use AO3, I love how much easier it is here to edit an already posted chapter than it is on FFNet. I've already made a good dozen or so corrections on this chunk in the 24 hours since I posted it. Hell, I even went back and fixed a few problems in the previous chapters too! It's completely fast and painless compared to how I remembered doing it on FFNet, so I wanna make an extra note to my readers here: If you find any spelling, grammatical, or stylistic errors that I've missed anywhere in the text, please feel free to point them out in the comments or a private message and I will do my best to edit them ASAP. I want to make this version of the fic as polished as I possibly can, so I welcome your assistance in catching any stupid fuckups that might have slipped through!


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